


Interrogatives?—Season 5

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Angst, Estrangement, F/M, Family, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Partners to Lovers, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 22,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29551566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: So. Yeah. I completely broke up with the show and then . . . pandemic? And the worst semester of my life? And general world on fire? In any case, I watched through the series again and did a story per episode, just as I did with Dialogic, and then with Object Lessons. So each chapter is an independent, episode-based story. It will take me a while to get these posted, but there are another 151 stories and I'll divvy them up by season. Oh, I suppose this is obvious, but each story is prompted by a question posed in the episode.
Relationships: Javier Esposito/Lanie Parish, Jenny O'Malley Ryan/Kevin Ryan, Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	1. Stirring—After the Storm (5 x 01)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He will never understand how she managed to slip out of the apartment with him asleep in her bed. He will never understand—on a number of levels—how he fell asleep in her bed. 

> _“What are you going to do in the meantime?”  
>  — Richard Castle, After the Storm (5 x 01)_

* * *

He will never understand how she managed to slip out of the apartment with him asleep in her bed. He will never understand—on a number of levels—how he fell asleep in her bed. 

There is the level of _Oh My God, It’s Kate Beckett’s Bed._ That is obviously the very uppermost level on which he does not understand falling asleep. The _OMGIKBB_ level ought to have guaranteed, at minimum, a night on his back with two fists pressed tight against his mouth to keep him from squealing, over and over, _Oh My God, It’s Kate Beckett’s Bed!_ At maximum, this level might very well have resulted in a night spent trying to rouse a skywriter from sound sleep so as to get the word out at the very crack of dawn. 

Then there is the level of _They Are Trying to Kill Her_. He’s surprised that the shame of falling asleep _knowing_ that the next Cole Maddox might, at any minute, be bursting in or blowing the place up or dumping a bag of poisonous snakes on her from above. He supposes it’s just that there’s no space for shame. Fear has filled him up, so there’s no room at the emotional inn, but that’s beside the point. He cannot understand how it is that he fell asleep with all that hanging over their heads. 

Up next is the _Richard Castle, Professional Snoop_ level. Kate Beckett’s bed—which, is still a code _Oh My God_ —is in Kate Beckett’s apartment. Kate Beckett’s apartment is filled with Kate Beckett’s _things_ , and _Richard Castle, Professional Snoop_ is going to need to handle, fiddle with, rearrange, and get the story of every single one of those things, now that he’s not just in Kate Beckett’s apartment, he is _In Kate Beckett’s Apartment._

He smiles to himself and puffs up a bit when he thinks about the fact that he’s been here a lot over the past year. But he hasn’t _been here_ like this. He hasn’t been deep into the inner sanctum, shivering pleasantly beneath her sheets. He hasn’t had the opportunity to slip from the bed and skirt the edges of the rooom, getting a jump on handling every last damned thing while she sleeps the sleep of the smugly satisfied. 

He rolls on to his side to face her. He rests his cheek on the knot of his folded hands and settles in for some quality staring time. This is another level on which he cannot make sense of the fact that he fell asleep the very first night of _OMGIKBB._ He could have literally lay here, just like this, drinking in the sight of her. He could have watched the rise and fall of her ribs and the theatrics of her face as she lay dreaming. 

But he had fallen asleep. It’s a mystery how it happened. 

He shifts beneath the sheets to ease a twinge in his hips. The sheets tangle up between his ankles, his calves, rough and unpleasant. He has the passing thought that this is another level. He does not see how it’s possible that he fell asleep on a mattress with far too much give, sandwiched in between sheets that may actually have a negative thread count. 

The discomfort Is the thing of a moment. She sighs in her sleep. A sly smile curves up one sensuous corner of her mouth. She stretches and tosses her head on the pillow. He notes absently that the pillows really need to go, too. He wonders idly how soon he could have an entirely new bed, complete with entirely new bedding, and pillows delivered. He’s distracted from this urgent cause, though, by movements that reveal more and more skin, more and more tantalizing stretches of her body that curve and dip and cry out to be touched. 

He hears their cry. He answers their call. She is tousled and languid and ever-so-slightly annoyed at the tête à tête he’s having with those various tantalizing stretches. She is, for an instant, stern and something close to grouchy about it, but his lips alight on her ribs. They skim across and down to her belly. His teeth nip a the flare of her hip, and she sighs. She stretches long and surrenders, then he surrenders, then she surrenders again and at some point he had toes, feet calves, thighs. 

He may or may not have those things now. Pulling breath back into his body is a full-time job. Keeping his hammering heart from bursting from his chest and doing laps around the room is his side hustle. Her cheek is fitted snugly into the curve of his shoulder. The world is falling away. He is sinking deep into the world’s best bed. He is asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: A bed could be construed as a thing, but this isn’t about the bed.


	2. Certainty—Cloudy With a Chance of Murder (5 x 02)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s known since the storm that being with him would have its challenges. Or has she known that? She’s lying in bed—alone and wide awake—with the covers pulled up to her chin. She’s telling herself that she’s known since the storm, but she’s not at all sure she believes herself. It’s not that she thought things would be magically perfect—she’s not some dewey-eyed teenager—but she’s not sure that she’s been bracing for the challenges of being with him all this time. 

> _“Now that that’s out of the way, where were we?”  
>  — Kristina Coterra, Cloudy With a Chance of Murder (5 x 02) _

* * *

She’s known since the storm that being with him would have its challenges. Or has she known that? She’s lying in bed—alone and wide awake—with the covers pulled up to her chin. She’s telling herself that she’s known since the storm, but she’s not at all sure she believes herself. It’s not that she thought things would be magically perfect—she’s not some dewey-eyed teenager—but she’s not sure that she’s been bracing for the challenges of being with him all this time. 

Being back to work is tough. _Going_ back is tough, and maybe that’s what she means. Maybe it’s not _him_ challenges, specifically, maybe it’s _them_ challenges and the high stakes—the lot she has to lose—if they slip and Gates finds out about them. That must be it. She turns on her side, prepared to drop off to sleep as swiftly as she usually does, now that that’s settled. 

It’s not settled, though. She flops back on to her back and contemplates the ceiling again. It’s really not pulling its weight in helping her sort out what she has known since the storm and what she has not. She elbows-and-knees her way on to her stomach. She turns her back on the unhelpful ceiling and sighs into the pillows. 

That’s a mistake, too. The pillows are no help at all, because they smell like him. The whole damned bed does, of course, but she hadn’t realized it, and now she has, and she can’t _unrealize_ it, because that’s not how realizing things works. 

She gives up on the bed. She allows herself one primal yell into the pillows that smell like him, because she deserves a primal yell. She swings her legs free of the tangle of sheets and blankets. She plants her feet on the floor and yelps at the cold. She scurries for the living room and half hopes—more than half, really—that he’ll somehow have camped out on the couch and be waiting for her, eager, contrite, and content to snuggle until the image of Kristina Coterra’s Electric Berry Bikini fades. 

But he’s not camped out. He’s gone home like she asked him to, though she thinks there’s a better than even chance that he _is_ eager. And there’s a one-hundred-percent chance that he’s contrite about the whole thing, from the on-air dumb decision to the scene she’d burst in on—he is _contrite_ about that, as he should be. 

But he is also … something else. She sinks down on to the empty, suddenly huge couch and sprawls sideways with her knees to her chest and her face pressed into the Union Jack. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to call up the scene exactly— _exactly._ It takes a moment, but then she has it, the split-second exchange she’s thinking of. 

She hears the words _other women_ clanging around, and she can’t quite believe it. She sees his face flashing with hurt, hears the words _for the record,_ and this is what she needs the ceiling or the couch or the pillow to weigh in on. It’s what she needs a real life friend to weigh in, but that’s not an option. She’s on her own. 

She approaches it like an interrogation—no surprises there. She asks herself—she insists on knowing—whether or not she is genuinely worried about him tossing her aside for an entertainment reporter? Is _Castle_ _running off_ scrawled on some secret piece of paper she’ll pull out of a pocket when their relationship ultimately implodes and she wants to know if she called it from the beginning. 

She crumbles under her interrogation techniques. Everyone does, eventually, and the answer is _No._ She is not worried about him running off with someone. She is … generically concerned about the person she is with running off or turning up with the other person he’s been seeing all along. And it’s not even that. She is generically worried about things not working out, because things never work out, more often than not by her design. 

But now, with him, things … objectively seem to be working out, so far at least. She heaves herself on to her back, on to her other side and stares out at the room. She sees the orchids he’d showed up with the other day, just because. There’s the hardcover on the coffee table that’s his, some stupid thing he’s hate reading. Some stupid thing he looks up from every five seconds so he can read aloud some of the worst passages. She sees signs everywhere of romantic gestures and domestic moments all jumbled together.

She hasn’t known since the storm that being with him would have its challenges. She hasn’t been bracing for anything. She swings her feet to the floor again. She heads back to the bedroom with purpose. She grabs her phone and considers it a minute. She fires off a text—it’s late, and she sent him away, so a text, not a call, and her cheeks burn— _I know you weren’t going to sleep with her._

The phone rings a millisecond t later. She taps the screen to take the call. He speaks before she can even say hello. 

_“Good.”_ His voice is firm. It’s relieved and more than a little frustrated. Fair enough. That’s going around tonight. _“I’m glad you know.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Existential dread. Not even a thing


	3. Inventory—Secret's Safe With Me (5 x 03)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s curious about her stuff, non-euphemistically speaking. Euphemistically speaking he has embarked on a world tour of her stuff, and that’s going swimmingly. But with the last of his daughter’s Leave @ Home boxes hoisted up on to her bedroom closet shelf, out of self-perseveration, he turns to contemplating the stuff of the most important woman in his life, non–blood relative category. 

> _“Are you writing this down?”  
>  — Lanie Parish, Secret’s Safe With Me (5 x 03)_

* * *

He’s curious about her stuff, non-euphemistically speaking. Euphemistically speaking he has embarked on a world tour of her stuff, and that’s going swimmingly. But with the last of his daughter’s _Leave @ Home_ boxes hoisted up on to her bedroom closet shelf, out of self-perseveration, he turns to contemplating the stuff of the most important woman in his life, non–blood relative category. 

He spends some quality time on the box labeled _Kinky Past_ —this is about self-preservation and saving himself from the endless cycle of mope—but that’s not what he’s interested in tonight, beyond steady background interest in the name Kate Beckett and the word _Kinky_ in close proximity. 

He’s interested in her box of medals for things only a parent would think to celebrate. He’s interested in the stash of Stuyvesant year books that she must have secreted away somewhere, and he is _very_ interested in the parade of nineties looks contained therein. 

He’d like to rifle through her stuff alongside her and see what she’s tucked away because it’s too painful to have within easy reach. He’d like to nudge her in the direction of celebrating some of those things, because even on the worst day. . . . He’d very much like to help her find the joy in some of those things that have been painful for so long. 

But as much as he’s in “stuff” mode, just now, he also wants her stories. He wants to know when her parents had _The Talk_ with her, and how bad her dad was at. He wants to console her by saying that at least her version of _The Talk_ was—presumably—did not involve Martha Rodgers and her epic tendency to overshare. 

He’d like to hear about Stanford and how she even managed to get her stuff all the way across the country. He wants to know if she flew alone, or if one or both of her parents came. In a fit of inspiration, he conjures a road trip—just her and her mother with an utterly imaginary station wagon that’s easily two decades too old for a late-nineties teenager. 

He wants to know if she was homesick, and if she’d brought a beloved stuffed animal, a blanket, or some other bit of contagious magic with her. He wonders if her dad would have sent her off with a nightlight that she’d only discover long after her parents were gone. He wants to hear the full and complete saga of Debbie Winnaker, her dorm room, and how she got through that. 

He’s grateful for what she’s shared with him tonight. The stickman is the ideal intersection of of stuff and story, and it delights him how quickly that all turned around—how quickly she’d gone from genuine irritation that he’d been rooting around in her drawers, to shyly sharing with him that memory. He’s grateful for all that, but it’s managed to whet his appetite—that, and he’s deep into self-preservation mode, and thinking about all this has taken his mind off the reality of his empty nest for ten seconds at a time. 

He decides he’s paced the echoing floorboards of the loft—upstairs _and_ down—quite long enough. He fishes out his phones and calls her. She answers before the first ring is finished, which might mean she’s worried about him. It might mean he’s about to milk the situation for all it’s worth. 

_“Hey. How’re things over there?”_

Her opening gambit is soft and noncommittal. She is definitely concerned. She wants to help. and he is feeling sorry enough for himself that he’s prepared to exploit that in pursuit of stuff, in pursuit of story. He is feeling sorry enough for himself that he escalates right away. 

“Not good,” he sighs theatrically. “Pretty sure there are monsters under the bed.” 

“Well, that’s a new development.” She laughs. “No monsters I saw that time we rolled right off the edge of the bed.” 

“New and _alarming_ ,” he agrees. ”If only there were someplace monster-free I could go.” He pouts hard enough that it absolutely must register on the other end of the line. 

_“Well_ ,” she sighs and gives his theatrics quite the run for their money. _“Guess that rules out my place.”_

“You have a monster under your bed?” He feigns shock. “Are under-bed monsters contagious, do you think? Did I give you monsters?” 

_“No,”_ she says seriously, and her voice is well into the o _nce upon a time_ mode. _“My monster followed me home from the hospital after I was born.”_

It’s the last thing he expects of her—a story like this offered up. He settles himself one of his oversized leather chairs. He shivers pleasantly and settles in. 

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me all about it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Monsters are not a thing for sure


	4. Teaser—Murder, He Wrote (5 x 04)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a weekend away. Just two days out of town—a weekend. But she’s excited about it, and she’s kind of trying not to be excited about it. She keeps leaving the word just lying around at strategic intervals inside her mind so that she doesn’t too excited about it. She doesn’t want to build it up too much. She doesn’t want to set herself up for a let down, because it’s two days: How great can it be? 

> _“Why would Beckett be holding out on us?”  
>  — Javier Esposito, Murder, He Wrote (5 x 04)_

* * *

It’s a weekend away. Just two days out of town—a weekend. But she’s excited about it, and she’s kind of trying _not_ to be excited about it. She keeps leaving the word _just_ lying around at strategic intervals inside her mind so that she doesn’t _too_ excited about it. She doesn’t want to build it up too much. She doesn’t want to set herself up for a let down, because it’s two days: How great can it be? 

She’s not really convincing herself. The _just_ s lying around aren’t really moving the needle on _excited,_ it seems, because there’s a chipper little voice inside her head that keeps answering _Pretty great—that’s how great it can be._

Things are, baseline, pretty great with them. And being out of town checks a bunch of _how great_ boxes. Being out of town means being away from work—like _away_ away. And then there’s the beach, the ocean, light that isn’t buzzing and fluorescent. Plus, being out of town means being _out_ with him, or more out than they can be here, anyway, and that’s more than just a little great. It’s more than just a little anything. 

She’s excited. 

But she’s nervous, too, in ways that are both vague and specific. She’s specifically nervous that the Hamptons are just cursed for them after the whole thing with Demming. But that’s stupid. She knows that’s stupid, and it’s the vague nerves that really have her spinning. 

She’s _vaguely_ nervous that they’re suddenly not going to get along—like they’re going to get sick of each other in the space of forty-eight hours. It’s silly. They’ve spent far longer holed up together, both during her suspension and in her stretches of off days since then, to say nothing of all the times they’ve been joined at the hip for days on end because they were working a case. For two people who could probably go pro at getting on one another’s nerves on the job, off the job, they’re weirdly compatible. They’ve fallen easily into any number of pleasant routines in the kitchen, in the mornings as they try to get out the door, and in their pre-bedtime rituals. 

But they won’t be in her kitchen or his kitchen, at least not the _his_ kitchen she knows, and what if she breaks something? What if everything charming about their pre-bedtime rituals is just weird out of context? What if it’s all strange and off-putting and that’s the end of this? 

She surprises herself with that little spiral. It gets an actual, out loud, _Whoa_ , because she was not expecting any of that to be lurking around the headspace she’s worked so hard to clutter up with _just_ s. Her nerves are officially out of hand, and she refuses to let them drown out the excitement. 

She decides to pack in service of that. It’s days and days away yet, but she wants to spend quality time contemplating exactly how much she’s overpacking, given the very low likelihood that she’ll be spending much time wearing much of anything. 

The strategy runs into problems right away, though. She goes to the dresser, then to the closet, then back to the dresser again, retrieving nothing. She suddenly can’t think of a single thing she wants to bring on a short beach vacation. 

She has plenty of things she could bring. That’s objectively true. She has shorts and tank tops and pedal pushers. She has breezy skirts and chunky sandals and flat slip-on shoes, because they spent the summer wandering the city while she was suspended. They spent it in parks and sprawled out on lawns. They spent it on his rooftop and occasionally racing model sailboats in Central Park, competing fiercely and laying under-their-breath bets not at all fit for the ears of the children surrounding them. 

She has _plenty_ to bring with her on a two-day vacation where her time spent with clothes on can probably be counted on fingers and toes alone. The mess of them spread across her bed is proof enough of that, and she doesn’t know why her stupid mind has to suck the joy out of everything. 

She’s contemplating this, head bowed, when the mess itself offers up the solution—the answer to her nerves and the celebration her excitement deserves. The mess itself offers up a memory. 

She pulls out her phone. She stares at a it a moment, then takes a breath. She dials. 

“Lanie. It’s me.” She takes another breath. There’s no going back now, but she finds she doesn’t want to. “Listen. I need to do some emergency shopping. I need … something for a weekend away. I’ll tell you—“ She gulps. “I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Brain became convinced that Lanie knows as of this episode. Also, Lanie picked out the cute red drerss. And pried something neon and spangly out of Beckett’s self-defeating hands. None of these are things. 


	5. Dispossession—Probable Cause (5 x 05)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t know what possessed him to kill Nikki’s mother in her own home. He doesn’t know what possessed him to have Nikki live there—to still live there all those years on. Except, of course, he knows exactly what possessed him: The ghost of fucking obvious metaphors. Nikki is imprisoned by her mother’s murder. Deep, right? 

> _“And you were going to fight them off with that?”  
>  — Alexis Castle, Probable Cause (5 x 05) _

* * *

He doesn’t know what possessed him to kill Nikki’s mother in her own home. He doesn’t know what possessed him to have Nikki live there—to _still_ live there all those years on. Except, of course, he knows exactly what possessed him: The ghost of fucking obvious metaphors. Nikki is imprisoned by her mother’s murder. Deep, right? 

No. Not deep. It’s an absolute hack move. It renders every single thing about the books completely unbelievable, and it’s only taken four years and infiltration by serial killer to wipe the authorial smugness right off his face. 

His mother is afraid to come home, afraid to stay. She makes no such admission. She flutters her hands as she throws things out of the bag that’s still half full from the trip she just got home from. She strings together implausible reasons why she’s flying right out the door again for a few days—maybe a week, could be two. She makes no admissions, but her hands are shaking. They’re shaking, and there’s a tremor in her voice. 

His daughter is _not_ afraid to come home. She is insistent that she must, that she will, that she is definitely coming home for a few days to do more laundry, to sort and swap out the last of her summer clothes, to pull down some of her sweaters, her boots, her fall things, because it’s getting to be that time of year. It’s getting to be that time, and she is not afraid. 

But he kisses the crown of her head. He ushers her, protesting and trembling, to the door. He tells her it’s not necessary, that her clothes will last her through the weeks they should have yet of trees blazing with color and in the air only a hint of the snapping cold that will come later. He ushers her to the door, and she is brave and defiant, and even still a tear streaks down her cheek with a force that shocks them both as she, wide-eyed, looks back at the grotesquely transformed expanse of her home. Her _home_. 

He is not afraid to be home. He is _angry_. He is burn-it-to-the-ground furious while Tyson’s repugnant litany plays on endless repeat in his mind. He is gutted by every all-too-probable narrative beat—the timing of the casting notice, his book signings, the night of the storm … 

He is not afraid. He is gutted and frozen, his feet rooted to the No Man’s Land just inside the door. He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t know how to live in a place, in a body, in a life so comprehensively violated. 

He doesn’t know, but she does. Of course she does. 

Her key is in the lock. “Gotta change these,” she says, holding up the offending item. She has an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. She has something heavy in a grocery bag in the hand not holding the offending item. “Tonight.” She gives him a deadpan look. “You know a guy, right?” 

“I know a guy.” His echo is hollow. “But it won’t—“ 

“It won’t.” She sets down her overnight bag the heavy thing, whatever it is, by the door. She is in his face. She is sinking her hands savagely into his hair. “Do it anyway.” She kisses him, hard. “Tonight.”

“You think he’s dead.” It’s a savage thing to say in a voice so small. It’s a lousy, gutted thing to take out on her, but he can’t seem to stop himself. “Why bother?” 

“I do think he’s dead,” she says, and it’s gentle. She comes back to him. She was going toward the kitchen. She was circling back for the heavy thing, whatever it is, by the door. But she comes back to him instead. “I do, Castle. But sometimes pointless gestures are all we have to go on.” 

She lifts her palm to his face. His head his heavy as he sinks into her touch. He heaves a sigh. He’s trembling. She’s trembling. Everyone, it seems, is trembling, but sometimes pointless gestures are all we have to go on. 

“What’s in the bag?” he asks as he slips his phone from his pocket. Tonight. He knows a guy. 

“Beer.” She pats his cheek and turns to retrieve the bag in question. “Cheap beer and movie theater candy. Stupid movies.”

“Sleepover?” He quirks an eyebrow. He strikes a pose, but something releases inside him. Something collapses with relief, even as she shakes her head. 

“A _no_ sleepover.” She throws a warning look over her shoulder. “But only if you get that guy over her to change those locks.” 

“Guy,” he says, swallowing hard as his emotions swing right into the next loop of this. “I know a guy.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The serial killer panopticon: Not a Thing


	6. Likeness—The Final Frontier (5 x 06)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s not sure what she was thinking when she commandeered Henry Barnett’s photo like that. Thinking, she supposes, played no particular part in that spur-of-the-moment abuse of power. If she’d been thinking she would have used wholly fabricated police powers to have Henry and the photographic evidence of her Nerd Glory Days deported back to wherever Henry hails from these days. 

> _“Isn’t it frackin’ awesome?”_   
>  _— Henry Barnett, The Final Frontier (5 x 06)_

* * *

She’s not sure what she was thinking when she commandeered Henry Barnett’s photo like that. Thinking, she supposes, played no particular part in that spur-of-the-moment abuse of power. If she’d been thinking she would have used wholly fabricated police powers to have Henry and the photographic evidence of her Nerd Glory Days deported back to wherever Henry hails from these days. 

If she’d been thinking, she’d have enlisted the aid of any one of a number of super villains to launch the photo—and possibly Henry, depending on his level of cooperation—into the sun. There’s pretty robust support for the hypothesis that thinking had nothing to do with her snatching the photo from Henry’s hand and taking off with it. 

And now she’s stuck with it. Except stuck might not be the right word. She _has_ it, and her feelings about that seem to be more complicated than her initial _Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure_ instincts. Her feelings, in the short term at least, focus on what to do with it.

She can’t keep it in her desk at work. She’s already come close to getting caught, and it’s one thing to tease and traumatize Castle for the treachery of knowing the secrets of her young adult life. It’s another thing entirely for Ryan—or worse, Esposito—to stumble across it. She cannot risk another near miss. 

She’ll smuggle it out tomorrow, but the question is where she’ll smuggle it _to_. Home, she supposes, but that seems a little sad. It’s not like she’s about to frame it. It’s not like she would hang on any given wall or prop it up on a table or bookcase for people to _see._ No. She is not coming out of the cosplay closet, even with a Creaver mask shielding her identity. But she still doesn’t like the idea of shoving it in a drawer, flat and alone, or in some kind of file folder, as though she might need to consult it for tax purposes some day. 

She could give it back to Henry. That comes to her only when _tomorrow_ has arrived. She’s at her desk. She has her hand on the drawer, just before the act of slipping the photo out and then straight into her bag. She sits with that option for a while, blinking at how long it took her to come around to it. 

She’s kind of ashamed. She’s _newly_ ashamed, because she’s already bullied the poor guy out of a memento that clearly means something to him. She thinks back to her signed _Temptation Lane_ photo and how much it delighted her—how much it _still_ delights her—and with a dread-filled heart, she wonders if she has some kind of obligation to strong arm the non-incarcerated members of the cast of _Nebula-9_ into signing the photo for Henry by way of penance for her ill-thought-out-sin. 

She tries to talk herself out of that, though. She’s pretty successful at talking herself out of that, because Gabriel Winter is a creep, and just in case there is a movie someday, she wants to start forgetting that he’s a creep as soon as humanly possibly so that she can make good on her vow to be first in line. 

She also doesn’t know where Henry hails from these days, so how would she even begin to send it back to him. She is busily ignoring the police powers—to say nothing of the _average-human-in-the-age-of-the-internet_ powers—she _does_ have to investigate questions like this, and instead wonders if she can’t enlist the aid of a super villain to launch _herself_ into the sun and neatly solve the problem that way. 

“You should make copies.” His voice nearly sends her straight out of her seat and up to the fifth floor. “Sorry,” he says quickly, then gives her an odd look. “I wasn’t sneaking. Or snooping. Snooking?” He shakes his head, totally unaware that he has just shot to the top of her _to-be-launched-into-the-sun_ list. “You were preoccupied.” 

“Copies for what?” she scoffs as she closes the drawer, which seems to have rolled halfway open of its own volition, with extreme prejudice. “Why would I want copies?” 

_“I_ want a copy,” he says. She whips her head to glare at him, but there’s no leer in the statement. There’s no teasing. It’s matter of fact. “I hardly have any pictures of you at the loft.” 

The word _hardly_ yanks at her attention. He has one _tiny_ framed photo of her on his bedside table. It’s the only one she’s aware of, and she’s suddenly paranoid that she’s on every wall, every flat surface, and she just hasn’t noticed. 

She’s about to ask. She’s about to interrogate him, and it’s possible that this instinct is a little bananas. It’s possible this is in the same realm as the instinct that has saddled her—in the first damned place—with this photo she doesn’t know how to feel about. She is aware that this might be the case, but she’s about to proceed anyway when he cuts into her thoughts excitedly. 

“Ooh, you know what?” He beams at her with the kind of pride in his latest, greatest idea that usually gets him in trouble. “I bet your dad would love one.” 

“My … _dad_?” She’s practically choking, and he catches up. He keys in to the chaotic headspace she’s in. 

“Your dad,” he says quietly. He casts the world’s least clandestine glance around the bullpen before he covers her hand briefly with his. “It’s a nice picture, Kate. From a happy time. People should see it.” 

“People,” she echoes. He’s convincing, though it seems impossible, too. Or next to impossible, so she starts there. “My dad.” She clears her throat. “You think my dad would like it?” 

“I do.” He smiles. “I really do.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Two-dimensional not things.


	7. Percuss—Swan Song (5 x 07)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He cannot keep his hands off her. It is a physical impossibility, even though he knows the stakes, even though he’s greedy and long past his one-time maybe people find out and maybe we won’t get to work together theater. He has no intention of going gently into that good maybe, and yet here he is facing it down, all because he just can’t keep his hands off her. 

> _“Would you call that appropriate for a police precinct?”_   
>  _— Victoria Gates, Swan Song 5 x 07_

* * *

He cannot keep his hands off her. It is a physical impossibility, even though he knows the stakes, even though he’s greedy and long past his one-time _maybe people find out and maybe we won’t get to work together_ theater. He has no intention of going gently into that good _maybe,_ and yet here he is facing it down, all because he just can’t keep his hands off her. 

It’s a global issue. It’s constant and all-encompassing the way he wants to touch her all the time. He wants to sneak tiny kisses and seek out shadowy corners for more sustained making out. He wants to help her on with her coats and shake the cascade of her hair free of her collar. He wants to cop a feel and dodge out of the way of her retaliatory ear twists, and he wants to hold her hand on the down-low. These are twenty-four/seven issues. 

It’s a little more intense right now, though. This is agonizing for her. The constant surveillance amplifies and preserves for the ages all the road bumps and missteps that every investigation hits. And that’s all on top of the loss of professional control in the first place. He finds himself running into more than one glare from her that quite specifically says that she’s thinking of the way he wormed his way into her life in much the same way as the jackals currently following her around. 

It’s not entirely fair, but he’s much less concerned, for once, with what’s fair—to him, anyway—and what’s not. His attention is on her. His _hands_ are on her, because he wants to offer her comfort and reassurance that she’s doing better than fine here on a difficult case that’s rife with complications. His hands are on her because he wants to remind her that she _likes_ his worming—except … ew. This is why his hands are on her, because in the blinding light of her presence, words fail him sometimes. 

His hands are on her, an innocent sweep of her hair behind her ear. A compliment paid, soft and low, because he knows she agonized over everything today—the sharply tailored slacks and jacket, the crisp, traditional blouse, the understated makeup and the the more deliberately styled hair. He touches her cheek and wins a smile for it. He touches her cheek and may very well have lost them everything. 

Not _everything_ , he tries to remind himself as they plead with Joel Midas, as they threaten Joel Midas, as he, at least, considers dangling Joel Midas out the window by his scrawny, second-rate-film-school ankles. The man will not budge, and he tries to fight down the clawing panic as he reminds himself the even if they are forced into the terrible _maybe_ of not working together any more, he’ll still have touching privileges during the _hi honey, I’m home_ hours.

He tries, but the clawing panic just … sort of shuts him down. Other than his ankle-based strategy, he is not contributing to what should be a fierce battle with Midas. He doesn’t even think to shut the blinds. She’s the one who ends up having to do that, and he almost reaches out to give her shoulder a grateful squeeze. He remembers—belatedly—the no-touching-in-the-workplace policy that should have been guiding him all along. 

He’s half out of himself, half collapsed inward as he gets a jump on lamenting his fate. He’s watching from a few steps off; he’s in the thick of it—the churning media engine that disrupts and co-opts and jeopardizes his entire private life. It’s a phenomenon familiar enough that he wants to throw a beer bottle at it, but he also wants to lie flat on his back on a desk and bemoan this inevitable turn of events. 

He’s wrapped up in himself. He’s disconnected from her, literally and figuratively, as the part of him that is driving the bus seems to accept that his days of being able to touch her at will are numbered. And then suddenly she’s breaking off the meeting. She’s walking out on Midas, and he has the wrenching sensation that she’s accepted it, too. 

And then things are happening. Work or whatever. He supposes that they all showed up today to catch James Swan’s murderer, so he guesses they’ll do that, then. He has his sparks of life—his sparks of resistance. The solve is cool, and so is the way they get to it, but there’s a funeral dirge playing in the back of his mind the whole while. 

The internal bagpipes kick in when Gates summons them. But it’s just that he’s been caught being a smart ass. He’s in trouble with the Captain, but he’s _always_ in trouble with the Captain, and he’s stunned—he’s _stunned_ —by this apparent miracle. 

He wants to grab her around the waist. He wants to swing her around in circles until she’s dizzy and he’s dizzy, but he does no such thing. He is done taking risks. He is all about self-denial and preserving the union now. He maintains his distance and he spies her mouthing _thank you_ right into the camera. It’s a while before he can ask her about it—a while before he has any idea how she pulled it off. 

“I begged,” she says simply as she brushes up against him in the kitchen. 

It’s not simple at all. He grabs her wrist. He spins her toward him. “You begged … who?” 

“The camera man.” She swats his hand away from the pan she’s stirring chicken in. “He felt sorry for me anyway.” 

“Sorry,” he repeats dumbly. “For you?” 

“Because I’m so hopeless with all that”—the spatula makes figure eights in the air—“camera stuff.” She shrugs. “And I told him it was important. That people not know. That we get to keep working together.” 

“You told him that.” He’s very much about the dumb repetition at the moment. “And he just—“ He blinks. “Wow. Where have you been all my media-saturated life?” 

She laughs. She turns and throws her arms around his neck, spatula and all. “Don’t be too impressed. I locked the other guy in the janitor’s closet when he said no.” 

“Still impressed, Beckett..” He runs his hands all the way down her sides, calling up a shiver. He presses the heel of his hand into the tense lower-back muscles on either side of her spine. He _touches_ her all over. “Still impressed.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Why is this long? Long is not a thing. 


	8. Interlopers—After Hours (5 x 08)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have earplugs.” His voice comes out of the darkness, eerie and close. It would have made her jump if he hadn’t, with expert timing, brought a hand to rest on her hip. “And there’s Tylenol with the good Benadryl in the bathroom?” 

> _“How about if we dive into this dessert?”_   
>  _— Richard Castle, After Hours (5 x 08)_

* * *

“I have earplugs.” His voice comes out of the darkness, eerie and close. It would have made her jump if he hadn’t, with expert timing, brought a hand to rest on her hip. “And there’s Tylenol with the _good_ Benadryl in the bathroom?” 

“The good Benadryl?” She fumbles for his hand. She takes two or three tries to fit her fingers in between his. She’s _so_ tired. “There’s bad Benadryl?” 

He scoffs. There’s just enough of the the city’s light licking its way through the slats of of the bedroom blinds that she can see his brow wrinkle, his lips purse. She hears the rustle of his head on the pillow as he shakes it with a sigh. “Blue Tylenol, blue Benadryl. The pink stuff makes you all hyper.” 

“They don’t make me hyper!” She wrests her fingers from his and slaps his shoulder. “I’ve never been hyper!” 

“Hmmm. Vivacious then?” He’s playing with fire, and he knows it. He’s trying to distract her, and it’s working 

“Vivacious?” She pokes at him. She fends him off when he tries to reel her in. “Am I the troublesome younger sister in a Jane Austen novel?” 

“Oooh, now there’s an appropriately literary scenario,” he purrs as he manages to band his arms around her and puts the lid on her physical abuse for the moment. “I wouldn’t say no to a little Regency role play.” 

There’s a peal of laughter from the living room, exactly and unfortunately on cue. It does more than kill the mood—not that there was seriously a Regency role play mood building—it resets the whole scene and she’s back to thinking about earplugs and blue Benadryl. 

She flops on to her back and glares up at the ceiling. He flops on to _his_ back and does the same. There are currently no peals of laughter, but there’s a conversation well above the civilized level of a murmur and it is the back of beyond o’clock. 

“I’m going to go say something to him.” She starts to peel back the blankets, but he catches her wrist. 

“You can’t,” he hisses. “You can’t … roust your father.” 

“Castle, I can _arrest_ my father for disturbing the peace,” she snaps. She tries to pull her hand away, but his fingers are tight and panicked. And it’s possible he has a point. It’s possible that the very fact that she’s just implied she’s going to arrest her own father suggests she’s sleep deprived. But she’s sleep deprived because her father and his mother are currently giggling and chatting like a pair of teenagers after a night spent wondering if they’d ever see their only children alive again. She sighs. “Give me one good reason why I can’t arrest him for disturbing the peace?” 

“First of all, if you’re going to arrest anyone, it should obviously be my mother.” He rolls his head on the pillow until his chin is pointing in her direction. “Second of all … it’s kind of nice, isn’t it?” 

He falls quiet. She does, too. They hear the low hum of conversation punctuated by the clink of of cup and saucer. They hear the worrisome peals of laughter—worrisome, because there is probably a very short list of things the two of them have in common to laugh about. It may, in fact, be a two-item list, and she thinks it’s probably a felony for her father to keep her awake yukking it up over her embarrassing childhood stories. 

“No,” she says sullenly. She folds her arms over her chest and avoids his pointed look. “It’s not nice. It’s the worst.” 

“Worse than hiding in spider infested playground equipment?” He walks his fingers up her arm, making her skin crawl at the very thought. 

“Stop it!” She hits out at him. Her voice is louder than it should be. 

There’s a lull in the living room conversation, and she can practically see her father’s head swiveling toward the sound of it. She holds her breath and relives the sensation of having one leg swung over the sill of her teenage bedroom window. He holds his breath and reaches out to grip her fingers again. It’s the height of silliness. This is his _home._ Her dad is a guest and, let’s face it, a terrifying ally for his mom in the driving-the-two-of-them-crazy campaign. 

“We should make out.” She flips on her side to face him. She reaches for the hem of his shirt and sends her fingers diving underneath. “We should really loudly make out.” 

“Kate.” He shrinks back from her, trying hard to yelp as quietly as he can. “Kate, Kate, Kate. This is … awkward enough that my mother brought your dad here in the dead of night. I think—and I know I’m going to hate myself for this five minutes from now—but I think removing all doubt from his mind about whether or not I’m defiling his daughter is—“ 

She doesn’t let him finish. She rolls on top of him and stops his mouth with hers. “And what if his daughter is defiling _you_?” she asks as she gives his ear a nip. “What’s your thinking on that?” 

“Thinking?” He gasps. “I think. Our policy is in development. But out of respect for our neighbors, we ask for qu—qui—quiet defilement when possible.” 

“When possible,” she echoes. “No promises.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Danger-courting nookie—not a thing


	9. Covering—Secret Santa (5 x 09)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is a supine mass of clichés right now. He is on his back with his arm tucked around the shoulders of the love of his life. She’s making a pillow of his chest. She is a peaceful, rosy-cheeked vision, fast asleep. His heart is full. He is a mass of clichés. 

> _“I take it this is your idea of working the Santa case?”  
>  — Victoria Gates, Secret Santa (5 x 09)_

* * *

He is a supine mass of clichés right now. He is on his back with his arm tucked around the shoulders of the love of his life. She’s making a pillow of his chest. She is a peaceful, rosy-cheeked vision, fast asleep. His heart is full. He is a mass of clichés. 

It’s wholly inadequate to say that it means the world to him that she came to be with him tonight—that she was brave and hopeful enough to step into the circle of one of the families she has kept watch for all this time. It is wholly inadequate to say that it satisfies his heart’s desire to see her and his mother and his daughter gathered around the same table, laughing and joking and drinking in the flattering light of the enormous tree. 

_Means the world … heart’s desire_ —the well-worn phrases don’t begin to cover it, but that’s what he mutters to himself, over and over. HIs heart and his mind are so full that this is what he’s got at his disposal. 

“Get up,” she mutters. It startles him, caught up in his litany of clichés as he is. “You’re sleep writing.” She’s not really awake, but her fingers dance over his ribs in an imitation of a keyboard. “I’m _sleeping_.” She frowns deeply. “Do you eat the Santa cookies?” 

He laughs softly. She is so funny. She is so adorable. She is so damned _wonderful_ that he can’t comply with her very sensible, very cranky directive. She’s so damned wonderful it ties his tongue—an unenviable position when the great Kate Beckett is waiting for an answer. 

_“Do_ you?” She seems unsure whether she wants to poke or pinch him as part of her enhanced interrogation technique. She settles for something in between. 

“I take a big bite,” he says as he captures her hand. He whispers into her palm even as she dips back below the surface of consciousness into the the dreams his clichéd mutterings roused her from. “And I arrange the crumbs artistically.” 

“Waste,” she says faintly. “Good cookie.” Her nose scrunches up. She somehow manages another pinch–poke maneuver, even though he would have sworn he was holding her hand fast. “Still have to get up. Get it out of your sys—“ She stumbles over her _S_ s and seems to blame him for it. Her fingers nip clumsily at his skin, hard enough to leave a mark. “ _System._ ” She smiles beatifically as she finally gets the word out. “Go cookie bite. I’m sleeping.” 

“Not sure ‘Cookie Bite’ works as a term of endearment,” he laughs into her hair. “But I’ll go. Back soon.” 

He risks a kiss on the lips, even though she’s awake enough to be cranky with him. She’s _just_ awake enough to be dangerous, though he manages to extricate himself without further battle wounds as her uncoordinated blows land on the pillow, the mattress, anywhere but on his person. 

He pads into the living room to take care of his Santa-ly duties. He takes a big bite of the frosted sugar cookie on the special Christmas plate Alexis always pulls out for the occasion. He sips a little of the milk. He checks “artistic crumb arrangement” off his mental list, and then he’s rather at a loss. 

He should write. He needs to write if he wants to be any good to anyone in the coming days. He grabs his laptop and brings it out into the living room. He parks himself in front of the tree and waits for the words to come. He waits fo the words. He waits. 

He has a mini _I’ll-never-write-again_ crisis, because his head and his heart and everything from his adrenal glands to his Islets of Langerhans are just filled with clichés. He starts making sensible financial plans in the back of head, because it’s obvious he needs a plan B if he and his mother and daughter are to be out on the street because he is a washed up writer. It’s all a little melodramatic until he spies cookie angel. 

The room is absolutely still, and yet he swears that the little figure is cheekily swaying in some unknown breeze. He swears it whispers to him about boxes of Christmas decorations packed away more than a decade ago, and he writes. 

He writes into the spaces of fragile, beautiful blown-glass spirals, passed down through the generations. He writes about elephants of all kinds on tiny hooks and baseball-themed ornaments He writes about a little girl hand decorating a butcher paper runner for a holiday meal, about the teenager who says she’s too old for tradition, but comes for Christmas dinner anyway. He writes about tubes of macaroni, threaded together and transformed with poster paint into a festive if geometrically improbable wreath. 

He writes furiously for a short period of time. These are placeholder stories. They are _get-it-out-of-his-system_ stories. They stand in for the tales he’ll coax from her this Christmas and every Christmas hereafter. What he commits to the document is one big stretch of clichés, but he’s gotten it out of his system, and with that, he returns the arms of the love of his life. 

With that he settles in next to his heart’s desire, and having her there means the world to him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Being in bed for a million stories in a row is not a thing. 


	10. Re: Past—Significant Others

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn’t have to go to this stupid dinner. She’s still behind the wheel of her car. She has it in park, but she hasn’t switched off the ignition yet. She’s not sure she’s not going to be a runaway dining companion, hence the still-idling engine and the tail lights that are frustrating car after circling car, the drivers of which seem to think they’re going to nudge their way into the space that’s only legal for her thanks to her professional courtesy placard. It’s a sign of the times—a sign of her headspace on the threshold of this stupid dinner—that she’s kind of feeding off their rage. She’s digging in and not switching the ignition off—not dousing the taillights—for precisely that reason. 

> _“This is a war, girl, and guess who’s losing?”_   
>  _— Lanie Parish, Significant Others (5 x 10)_

* * *

She doesn’t have to go to this stupid dinner. She’s still behind the wheel of her car. She has it in park, but she hasn’t switched off the ignition yet. She’s not sure she’s not going to be a runaway dining companion, hence the still-idling engine and the tail lights that are frustrating car after circling car, the drivers of which seem to think they’re going to nudge their way into the space that’s only legal for her thanks to her professional courtesy placard. It’s a sign of the times—a sign of her headspace on the threshold of this stupid dinner—that she’s kind of feeding off their rage. She’s digging in and not switching the ignition off—not dousing the taillights—for precisely that reason. 

She probably _shouldn’t_ go to this stupid dinner, given that not-exactly-healthy headspace, and she certainly doesn’t have to go. She has better options. There’s WitSec for one. She knows a guy. She’s a cop. She knows a _lot_ of guys. For a slightly less extreme alternative, she could call the precinct and get Gates to write her a note: _Detective Beckett is grounded. She cannot go out for a stupid dinner._

She doesn’t like that option so much. It reminds her that she could have said no in the first place. She could have politely declined the offer on the grounds that she’s in the middle of a case, and the math checks out there, because she _is_ demonstrably in the middle of a case. 

But she had not politely declined, which is _his_ fault, by the way. He’d been standing there looking like such an aggravating deer in headlights that she’d waved goodbye to the highly sensible option of politely declining, and back in the break room, her mind had just completely downshifted into some kind of artificial cool mode that has long since left the building. 

She still doesn’t have to go, though. She is a resourceful person who may, yes, have left the simplest and most sensible option on the break room counter, but there are others. There are always other options, like calling in a bomb threat to the restaurant, for example. This is the current frontrunner, and it’s only _mostly_ about not wanting to go to this stupid dinner. This restaurant may actually deserve a bomb threat. 

She leans forward and cranks her neck to look up at the free-swinging sign above the deeply recessed door. It’s very nearly black on black. With a full-on spotlight, she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to read the name to confirm the she’s in the right place, but she makes an educated guess that it is based on the addresses on either side. She makes an educated guess based on the fact that this is exactly the kind of place Meredith would pick—the kind of place that probably serves truffle infused oxygen on inedible banana leaves and a selection of slimy artisanal tapioca balls for dessert. 

Calling in a bomb threat might actually be what civic duty and common decency require of her, but she doesn’t reach for her phone. She doesn’t reach to switch the ignition off. This might not be absurd yet, but it’s getting there. Once upon a time, she was sitting here, ludicrously early. That, however, has long since ticked over into being there on time, and as she sits her contemplating her wealth of options, things are nudging decidedly onward toward late. 

She rolls back around to begging off on account of work, even if it means cowering at the precinct for most of the night. It’s only just occurring to her the she will have to cower at the precinct most of the night, because going home, going back to his place is a nonstarter here. The realization—eleventh hourness of it— has her banging her head against the steering wheel. 

She really does not want to do this, but the options that don’t involve plastic surgery and learning to speak Kiswahili seem to be dwindling. She does grab her phone now, but she’s not thinking about bomb threats. She’s _mostly_ not thinking about bomb threats, as the door to the restaurant opens and the place belches forth a gaggle of late twenty-somethings in microscopic clothing despite the bitter cold. They shriek and air kiss and shriek again. 

She has her phone in her hand, and it’s him she wants to call to ask for advice about how to deal with him. She sees now the flaw in the system of being involved with her best friend—or her guy best friend, or her best friend who isn’t into bone saws or whatever. She thinks one last time about not going. She lets herself admit that if she _did_ call him, if she _did_ say she was going to skip the Dinner of Supreme Awkwardness, he’d be over the moon. He doesn’t want her to go to this stupid dinner, either. 

But she thinks she kind of has to, and not just to save face at this point. She thinks she has to go because there’s a better than even chance that Meredith is expecting her to bail—that this is some chaos play on her part, and she has a chance to subvert it. She thinks she has to go, because on the off chance that this is something sincere on Meredith’s part, it behooves her to do her best to establish cordial relations with his daughter’s mother. Given that she’s left the simple _sorry, but no_ far behind, it behooves her to go. 

She switches the ignition off. She pockets keys and phone and makes her way through the deeply recessed doorway and into a space that immediately confirms her worst fears. She spies a redhead at an uncomfortably intimate table for two that’s half shrouded by a heavy curtain and strides over. 

“Meredith,” she says, offering a cool smile. “I hope I’m not late.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Stalling is the ultimate lack of thing. 


	11. Talkin' 'Bout My Generation—Under the Influence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s a little surprised at the way Esposito steps up when they’re about to lose Joey Malone to either foster care of juvenile hall. It’s not that Esposito is any less dedicated than the rest of them—he’s seen first hand the ends of the earth the man went to with Lockwood, and again the summer after Beckett’s shooting, and once more when Cole Maddox came calling. He’s seen first hand the compassion and empathy he can wield, and he feels rather bad for being surprised. 

> _“So what are you, Officer Babysitter?”  
>  — Joey “Monster” Malone, Under the Influence (5 x 11) _

* * *

He’s a little surprised at the way Esposito steps up when they’re about to lose Joey Malone to either foster care of juvenile hall. It’s not that Esposito is any less dedicated than the rest of them—he’s seen first hand the ends of the earth the man went to with Lockwood, and again the summer after Beckett’s shooting, and once more when Cole Maddox came calling. He’s seen first hand the compassion and empathy he can wield, and he feels rather bad for being surprised. 

It’s just that a kid—a teenager who is clearly chock full of issues—is quite the undertaking, even if it’s just for a night, and neither nurturing nor a knack for supervision tops the list of the fine Detective’s fine qualities. And yet, Esposito had apparently piped right up with the solution, and he’s kind of wondering about it. He would kind of like to ask her about it, but there’s a vibe coming off her that he hasn’t quite made sense of yet. 

So he takes the win instead. He embraces the fact that Esposito is on teen watch, and Ryan is following up on what meager leads they have. He does a little dance when he realizes that means she gets to knock off early, and he has the honor and privilege of trying to coax her into actually doing something relaxing instead of sticking around to do paperwork or going off to her place—sans him—to hone her superhero skills, or whatever other objectively boring thing she goes back to her place—sans him—to do. 

“Feet up at my place?” He uses helping her on with her coat as an excuse to speak low in her ear. “I could fix you a bowl of Lucky Charms—just marshmallows—for dinner and we could watch something mindless?” 

Her eyes light up briefly at the prospect of Lucky Charms, just the good parts. He wonders, not for the first time, how a woman who keeps herself in absolutely top-of-the-line shape has such terrible eating habits, but he’s not too proud to work that angle. There are few tactics he won’t deploy if they up his chances of an evening with her. He thinks that this tactic has given him a lock on the foreseeable future, but she reverses course. She looks at her shoes and shake her head. 

“That sounds tempting.” She smiles at him. “It _is_ tempting, but …” 

“But you have something better to do than abuse your pancreas and yell at _True Blood_ for how egregiously dumb it’s gotten?” He’s not hitting the right tone. He’s too jocular and simultaneously too blasé, as though he can take it or leave it if she decides to head to her place rather than his. He _still_ hasn’t deciphered the vibe she’s been putting out ever since she emerged from the conference with Joey Malone’s case worker. 

“I just—“ He follows her eyeline through the blinds and into the conference room where Esposito is still engaged in signing his soul away in blood by the looks of it. She sighs and looks back at him, shaking her head apologetically. She searches the surface of her desk as though she’s looking for some busy work to latch on to. She starts to unbutton her coat. “I think I should stick around here a while longer …” 

She trails off, and he suddenly wonders if the reason he can’t translate her current vibe is because _she_ can’t translate it. She’s standing in the no man’s land between desks, pivoting to spy on the conference room proceedings, then back to the board, then back to Esposito and his administrative saga. 

“You’re worried about him,” he says, surprising himself, as he’s just put the pieces together. “You’re worried that Esposito …” 

He stops. His brow furrows hard core as he tries to hang specifics on the worry she’s radiating. It’s no easy task, though. He is suddenly—and not entirely fairly—flooded with awareness of Esposito’s _not-so-fine_ qualities. He is almost pathologically impatient and stubborn. To say he has a hair-trigger temper is an insult to hair triggers everywhere. He’s never met a problem that he did not firmly believe he could not chase down and pummel into submission. All of that could be a problem. It could very definitely be a problem. He turns to her, and he knows—he _knows_ —that his face is blank with completely unhelpful horror. 

“There’s nothing to worry about,” she snaps as she spins out of his orbit. She wrestles her coat off one shoulder, but she’s missed a button and she’s kind of stuck. “I’m not _worried._ ” 

“You are,” he says gently. He frees the button she’s missed and steps back to give her space. She’s not above a little chasing and pummeling herself, not that he objects. “You’re“—he hesitates a second, but it’s just too sweet a realization to let pass by—“You’re mom worried about him.” 

“ _Mom_ worried?” It comes out loud enough that she startles herself. “Mom worried is not a thing,” she grumbles about a million decibels lower. She yanks her sleeve back on and fiddles with the placket of her coat, then looks up at him uncertainly. “Mom worried is stupid.” 

It’s not quite a question. It’s a plea for reassurance, for an explanation that he doesn’t have about how these things work—who worries about whom. He doesn’t have an explanation, but he has quick fingers and there’s a bowl of Lucky Charms—just marshmallows—in her future. 

“Not stupid.” He discreetly places a hand at her lower back and ushers her toward the elevator. “Mom worry is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. That energy’ll get him through.” 

She sighs and steps to the back of the elevator car. She casts one more look in the direction of Esposito, of “Monster” and the unlikely duo the two of them make. “It better.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A//N: Long week to say the least. This is long, to say the most. Neither of these are things. 


	12. Anthology—Death Gone Crazy (5 x 12)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are things she should get around to asking him. There are things she’s been meaning to get around to asking him, because that’s how this works, right? That’s how people who are … dating … together … in a relationship … are supposed to behave, and an overburden of ellipses notwithstanding, they are … those things. 

> _“How about we continue this conversation at my place?”  
> _ _— Scarlett Jones, Death Gone Crazy (5 x 12)_

* * *

There are things she should get around to asking him. There are things she’s been meaning to get around to asking him, because that’s how this works, right? That’s how people who are … dating … together … in a relationship … are supposed to behave, and an overburden of ellipses notwithstanding, they are … those things. 

But beyond the realm of _supposed to_ s, she has just been meaning to ask him things in general ever since Meredith flitted off to Paris all by her lonesome. But _meaning to_ and _Meredith_ exist in tension with one another. She rejects utterly the woman’s parting hex about pamphlets and quips and soufflés. She curses herself silently, because it’s voodoo she herself invited in by asking in the first place— _Why didn’t it work out?_

She’s trapped herself between Meredith and the deep blue sea, because there are things she _wants_ to ask him—that have nothing to do with _supposed to_ s or even _meaning to_ s _—_ because she likes him, she is interested in him, and she loves when he tells her stories. She _wants_ to ask because that ridiculous man has gotten himself completely spun up over Alexis’s _Rated M for Mr. Rogers video_ blog and she thinks he could probably stand to do some reminiscing about the early days. He could probably stand to mourn in narrative form, and if that’s an ellipsis-following _supposed to_ , it’s also a want, and yet she can’t find a point of entry. 

There’s Beau Randolph’s paternal turn. That’s a possible point of entry, although she regrets juxtaposing that name and that phrase almost as soon as she thinks it. But in all seriousness, she wonders about the parallels. She wonders about the path. 

Because it’s not like he was a sleazy porn mogul before his daughter, but he was kind of a post-Kyra mess. She knows that because he’s crafted his own legend out of that particular wreckage. He has told, does tell, will tell forevermore the stories of his conquests and the wild oats he sowed before turning on a dime to be the only real parent his daughter would have. 

He talks about all that less. Six months ago, going on seven now, she’d have said he never talked about it, but that’s not quite true now. Because he’ll see her pick up some little thing—a photo in a tiny oval frame, what seems to be a filthy ball of tangled thread that turns out to be the last vestiges of her childhood blankie—and he’ll rush over to share some tiny anecdote, shyly, proudly, eagerly. He’ll tell another kind of story entirely, and she loves that, she really does, and it’s obvious that he does, too. There are no quips there, no collapsing soufflés, and so why doesn’t she ask?

Why doesn’t she just _ask_ what it was like to walk the floor with a baby who cried all night? Or, if she didn’t cry, what was it like to creep on tip toe to the door of her room, only to peer in and find her wide-open blue eyes staring defiantly back? What was it like to watch her sleep or to wake up, having finally collapsed himself, only to find her out of the crib, out of her room, having rampaged all over the loft? 

She can’t say. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t just ask, and she honestly worries about the answer sometimes. She’s honestly worrying about it now—tonight—when she ought to be sleeping herself. 

She worries that she’s not asking because she’s absurdly afraid of bringing up anything that even remotely smacks of a conversation about their future. And she’s afraid that it’ll look like she’s storing up some kind of ammunition—like she doesn’t believe he really did change, reform, whatever you want to call it. She’s afraid that it’ll look as if she thinks she’s the one who gets to decide what “real” looks like on that front. And possibly worst of all, she’s afraid she’s not asking because she’s trapped in some kind of nonsense Couture Pentagram by Meredith. 

It’s dumb, not worrisome. She’s not sure what kindly spirit slipped in to drop that realization on her pillow, but there it is, urging her up, up, up. She doesn’t bother to change out of her pajamas. She crams her feet into the pair of flat shoes that comes to hand first. She throws on a coat and shoves her wallet into the pocket, followed by her keys once she’s out the door. 

She allows herself the luxury of a cab, and then she is on his doorstep with the cold clinging to her like Spanish moss. She is in his hallway, slipping off her awkward, flat shoes. She is tossing her coat over a chair and clambering into bed beside him. 

For his part, he is stunned silent. He’s been sitting up in bed, reading, and he’s frozen in place, apparently, with the book—a physical book for once—propped on one bent knee. She knocks it out of his hands. She loses his page, surely, but even that doesn’t really snap him out of his state of suspended animation. 

“Tell me a story,” she says rolling defiantly to her side to face him as she tugs generous fistfuls of blankets all the way up to her chin. “About Alexis. When she was little—really little. Tell me what that was like.” 

“A … story?” He looks utterly baffled—pleased, but utterly baffled. “Kate, what’s—“ 

“Shhhh.” She cuts him off. She grabs his hand and pointlessly, paradoxically, chafes it between the frigid skin of her own. “A story. Just tell me one.” 

So he does. He tells her a story and when she asks, he tells another one. And that has a side story or three. He snaps off the bedside light and rolls to face her. He grabs covers by the fistful and pulls them up to his chin, too. He tells stories. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Avoiding things—that’s the least thing-y thing of all time. 


	13. Chorus—Recoil (5 x 13)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t so much wake as surrender to the fact that he is not asleep—that he will not be asleep any time in the foreseeable future. She is awake. She is up and out of bed, taking the warmth of her body almost immediately with her. He presses a palm to the coolness of her pillow and asks himself again if he’s doing the right thing in clinging by his fingernails to the mattress, because this is one of those times where she almost certainly needs her space. He asks himself. 

> _“How is it not my fault?”_   
>  _— Kate Beckett, Recoil (5 x 13)_

* * *

He doesn’t so much wake as surrender to the fact that he is not asleep—that he will not _be_ asleep any time in the foreseeable future. _She_ is awake. She is up and out of bed, taking the warmth of her body almost immediately with her. He presses a palm to the coolness of her pillow and asks himself again if he’s doing the right thing in clinging by his fingernails to the mattress, because this is one of those times where she almost certainly needs her space. He asks himself. 

He would like her not to need her space. That’s sort of generally true, and he knows it can be a problem. He knows that he occasionally crosses the borderline between devoted and clingy, and he’s working on it. But now, here, specifically, he would like her not to need her space, because this is about her mom, and she’s had close to a decade and a half of space when it comes to that.

It’s math that decides him—the metric, at first, of those years as a percentage of her life, the number of scenarios he imagines her imagining, where there is a straight line from good to bad, from righteous to repugnant, from justice to vengeance. He imagines her imagining herself to be such terrible things—all alone—and that decides him. 

He throws off the blankets, then covers his spot on the bed carefully. It’s a hopeful gesture that says he’ll have her back here soon, and she’ll want the warmth. It’s an unlikely wish upon a star. He fumbles for his robe. He’s clumsy and shivering and maybe he was asleep in fits and starts. Maybe there is not a straight line for him between rest and restlessness. 

He shuffles into the living room. He lets his footsteps be heavy to announce his coming. He argues with himself even as he approaches about whether he’ll go if she asks him to, if she shoes him back to bed and tells him she’s fine. He doesn’t know if he’ll go or stand his ground, but it doesn’t come to that. 

She is an irregular shape cut out of darkness. She’s beneath a heap of covers mostly. Her chin is propped on her hands, on the top of the high back of the couch as though she’d like to take a sip of the moonlight that’s just slipping in through the window. She rocks her head toward the window, tipping her face up to peer at him. 

“Sorry,” she says softly. 

“For what?” He sinks to the long end of the couch. He twists his body to mirror her pose, to prop his chin on his hands on the back of the couch and sip at the moonlight. “What’s there to be sorry about, Kate?”

He expects a litany. He expects her to begin with the weight of Melanie Rogers on her conscience and work her way back to McManus’s son, to the Manager at the Rosslyn hotel, Orlando Costas, Montgomery, her mother’s colleagues. Her mother. That’s the litany of regret he expects, but she reaches out a hand to skim the curve of his cheek and through his hair. She trails her fingers all the way down his spine the way she sometimes does on lazy mornings when there’s nothing more pressing than the crossword calling to them. She surprises him with her earnest, searching touch. 

“I’m not remarkable.” The words are suffused with sorrow. They are heavy in the air between them. “I’d already—“ She seeks out his eyes in the dim light through the window, then quickly looks away. “That’s right when I found it. McManus’s letter. When I told you to go, and you told me—“ 

Her voice deserts her. Her hand falls away. It gets lost in the sea of blankets that he’s envying her right now. He goes searching for that hand. He goes searching for her slight, shivering form until they’re under the sea of blankets together, holding on to one another and longing for a sip of the moonlight. 

“I told you the truth, Kate.” He speaks the words right into her skin, with lips pressed into the hollow behind her collar bone. “One frail moment doesn’t change that. One choice, under impossible circumstances, that you didn’t ultimately make—“

“But, Castle—“ She struggles with him. She tries to wriggle away, but he takes a chance on not giving her space—on clinging to her just this once, and it pays. She stills in his arms. She draws a shuddering breath and he feels the heat of a handful of tears. “Tell me again.” 

“You, Kate, are remarkable. You are,” he whispers, and there they are, the two of them. There they are, one irregular shape cut out of darkness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Darkness. Moonlight. The battered soul. Not things. 


	14. Petite—Reality Star Struck (5 x 14)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He gave out paper Valentines the first year he was at the precinct. Like the bullpen was a second grade class, he gave out store-bought paper valentines and those chalky candy hearts that he’d had printed up specially, each one inscribed with archaic sexy talk. She still has hers—Carl and Ellie decked out in their adventure gear, each one holding a bunch of balloons. It’s tucked well away with the pair of and hearts, one pale green, one peach. They each say something salacious in Middle English, though she’s not exactly sure how salacious. 

> _“It’s not too much?“  
>  — Lanie Parish, Reality Star Stuck (5 x 14)_

* * *

He gave out paper Valentines the first year he was at the precinct. Like the bullpen was a second grade class, he gave out store-bought paper valentines and those chalky candy hearts that he’d had printed up specially, each one inscribed with archaic sexy talk. She still has hers—Carl and Ellie decked out in their adventure gear, each one holding a bunch of balloons. It’s tucked well away with the pair of and hearts, one pale green, one peach. They each say something salacious in Middle English, though she’s not exactly sure _how_ salacious. 

She’d managed to palm the hearts despite her performative lack of interest in any of his shenanigans. Everyone else had _ooh_ ed and _ahh_ ed over the gesture, and every last person—save her—had spent a chunk of the morning comparing their little paper cards, swapping stories of kindergarten crushes, and, presumably, letting killers go free.

There were no paper Valentines the second year he was hanging around, there was only the devastation of Damian Westlake, and still, she has a coaster with an abstract doodle, courtesy of his perennially busy hands and the fancy fountain pen he has on his person at all time. There was so much pain between them, despite the drink they’d gone for on the heels of Damian’s arrest. She was with Josh, and his breakup with Gina was still fresh and painful in its strange, rigid way. They’d drunk in silence, mostly, side by side. There was little either one of them could say, under the circumstances, though surely the nearness to one another had helped. She has to believe it had helped. The coaster she’d swept off the bar and into her purse, the coaster she’d tucked away with a store-bought Valentine’s card and two candy hearts is that belief manifest. 

She has nothing from last year, at least nothing concrete that’s tucked away where the Snoop Master General is unlikely to find it. It bothers her that she doesn’t have _something_ other than recurring nightmares of drowning in her own damned car as a touchstone for the day. She supposes last year was simply too grim for there to be any meaningful remembrance of the day, but she wishes she had something—a chess piece, a hostage head bag—and on that note, maybe some years deserve to go un-commemorated. 

And now there’s this year and a night in after a long and draining case, a long and draining subplot courtesy of the Gift Ninja. There are, once again, no tiny cards in white envelopes, no chalky, yet compelling little conversation hearts, and she wonders if people were expecting that. She wonders if there’s disappointment because people really were expecting a triumphant return, because she’s not arresting his childhood champion, and no one is drowning. 

She wonders, but her concern for people who are neither she nor he is absolutely idle. She mostly rides the wave of good wine and great sex, the wave of utter contentment as she lies there, burrowed under the covers and fitted comfortably into the curves of his body. She’s happy enough tonight, she thinks, without flimsy cardboard with its furred edge where he’s separated one tiny rectangle from another right along the dotted line, and the rest of the world can get its middle English smut on in some other way.

“Do you mind much?” he asks with his lips right up against the nape of her neck. “Valentine’s Day in, and no present in the end.” She can feel his skin warm again as the embarrassment of the whole incident with Gates makes him blush. “You must mind.” 

“I don’t,” she tells him without hesitation. It’s not exactly a surprise that it’s true, but she hadn’t quite thought about it until he up and asked. “I like this.” She slides her fingers through his and holds his hand tight. “I like … quiet things. Little things, you know?” 

She cranes her neck to meet his eye. She can see the joke forming on his lips, a thrust of his body against hers and a growling denial that there are any _little things_ to be found her tonight. But their gazes lock and she sees it fall away—the joke, the deflection, the retreat to their usual, mutual comfort zone. He doesn’t know about her tiny collection—the coaster, about the Carl and Ellie card and the two chalky hearts with their mysterious, salacious inscriptions. He doesn’t know about those things specifically. But he knows she’s sincere, that far from minding so much, she likes the little things. She likes Valentine’s Day in, and the fact of it it lights him up from the inside. 

“Little things,” he echoes. He captures her lips in a sweetheart’s kiss. “Here’s to little things.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Things so little they are not things. 


	15. Disarray—Target (5 x 15)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sink, when he gets home, is full of dishes. He is mortified. He stands at the edge of the kitchen with his feet planted and his hands made into fists as though the people from the FBI might suddenly halt in the midst of their synchronized scurrying to gasp and clutch their pearls at the shame of it all. 

> _“So is that acceptance or denial?”_   
>  _— Kate Beckett, Target (5 x 15)_

* * *

The sink, when he gets home, is full of dishes. He is mortified. He stands at the edge of the kitchen with his feet planted and his hands made into fists as though the people from the FBI might suddenly halt in the midst of their synchronized scurrying to gasp and clutch their pearls at the shame of it all. 

It’s worse than just the dishes. The counter and stovetop are cluttered and dusted with flour and whatever his mother had mistakenly added to the pancake batter that morning—whatever she has _been_ mistakenly adding to the atrocious pancakes that Alexis has almost certainly been choking down with an appreciative smile all this last year, because she’s trying. His mother is trying, just not when it comes to clean up, and he is mortified. 

He rolls up his sleeves—he tries to. The buttons at his cuffs fight him, and he almost cries out in frustration, in rage, in the all-consuming terror that has scraped him raw from inside out, but they really might stop then, all the scurrying men and women in their sober suits. They really might notice that the sink is full of dishes, the kitchen is a disaster. They might discover that he is a failure as a father, so he swallows hard. He grits his teeth. He is silent. 

The first button gives, and he has the secret now. He folds a length, a length, a length of shirtsleeve that it seems to him is limp and soiled—another embarrassment, another symbol of his failure. But he folds a length, a length, a length, then repeats the process until his forearms are bare, until he is in shame-faced motion, moving mechanically from the stove to the sink, the stove to the sink, the stove to the sink. 

He fills it—the deep stainless steel rectangle sunk into high-end counter top he’s usually so proud of. He eschews the dishwasher and fills the sink with nearly scalding water and suds. He is performing for a distracted audience—for the men and women in their sober suits who are not looking for the daughter he has lost. They are _waiting_ to be looking. They are _waiting_ in his disastrous, filthy home for something—anything—that will let them begin to look for her. 

This is his nightmare. A snort of razor-wire laughter runs through him as he sinks his arms to the elbow into the snow-white lake of suds. Of course it’s his fucking nightmare. His daughter is gone. She has been _taken,_ but that’s not what his mind means when it draws up the word—nightmare, flashing acid green in the center of his being. 

It’s the dishes that are his nightmare. It’s the mess in front of strangers. She has always teased him. His daughter has always played the _tsk_ ing grown-up and teased him about his tendency to leave spoons and bowls and coffee mugs wherever he happens to be when his fingers need to fly over the keyboard or he needs to click open the nearest fountain pain and set the words flowing across the page. 

He has the slovenly ways of the teenager she almost isn’t any more, and this role-reversal has been the truth between them for some time now. But there’s an older truth he’s never told her, an older truth there’s no point in revealing to anyone anymore, because it’s ridiculous. 

He has been, through the stretches of his daughter’s life that she’s forgotten, a meticulous housekeeper. He has been the packer of lunches that constitute obsessively well-balanced meals. He has been the doer of laundry, the braider of hair, the first medic on the scene for any scrape, bump, or bruise. He has climbed the ranks to absolute pancake master, because it has always felt like the world was watching. 

It has always felt like a mismatched sock, a stain on her shirt, one ponytail higher than the other would draw attention to him—it would draw _attention_ to the fact that he has been doing this himself since the moment his daughter was born, and that is not the natural order of things. 

He has lived in ludicrous fear of this—a dirty, chaotic house, a packed lunch with too much junk food, or the wrong kind of junk food, and they would notice. They would take her away. They would take his daughter away at the first sign of a slip up. 

It’s absurd. It has always been absurd, but here he is, up to his elbows—up to the soaked cuff of his shirt sleeves—in scalding dishwater. Here he is in the midst of a chaotic house of horrors. It’s absurd, and yet his daughter is gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Existential dread—that’s not a thing. 


	16. Unassisted—Hunt (5 x 16)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She owes him an apology. She actually owes him something like four years’ worth of apologies. This isn’t so much a realization as it is an annoying, persistent buzz inside her head. She is too angry for epiphanies right now. She is too furious with him for taking off—for pulling a junior high scam on her and Martha—and she is beyond furious with herself for falling for it. But weaving through, hovering around, buzzing above all that fury is the reality that she owes him an apology. 

> _“All these years and you never once let us know you were out there?”  
>  — Richard Castle, Hunt (5 x 16)_

* * *

She owes him an apology. She actually owes him something like four years’ worth of apologies. This isn’t so much a realization as it is an annoying, persistent buzz inside her head. She is too angry for epiphanies right now. She is too furious with him for taking off—for pulling a junior high scam on her and Martha—and she is beyond furious with herself for falling for it. But weaving through, hovering around, buzzing above all that fury is the reality that she owes him an apology. 

She can’t let it distract her, though. She doesn’t let it, because he is a selfish, reckless, unthinking _fool_ and she has to do whatever she can to prevent that foolishness from being fatal. The news that Roger Henson had a girlfriend is like a gift from on high—or maybe a gift from down below, given the instincts she’s running on. But whether it’s divine or infernal, Pauline Degarmo is most certainly a gift. 

Pauline Degarmo is a lead waiting to happen. She is who knows how many leads waiting to happen. She’s a gift on that level, but it’s more than just that. Pauline Degarmo mouths off. She kicks back in the interrogation room chair and settles in for some quality stonewalling. Pauline Degarmo crosses her arms and tips herself backward, utterly oblivious to the way Kate’s eyes go practically black as she channels her inner Mark Fallon.

She sends Pauline Degarmo sailing backward, chair and all. She towers over the woman as she sprawls backward into the cinderblock wall. _Good. I believe you,_ she rasps, and she’s almost sorry—almost—at how quickly the woman caves. The practically black sentiment behind her eyes could have used more of a workout. 

She runs on that—the fury and the focus it gives her. It’s the glue holding her fractured, terrified form together and moving her through the details of the case, but the sorrow is catching up to her. The conviction that she owes him a thousand apologies is catching up to her. 

She thinks about his coldness throughout all of this and how terrifying it is. She thinks of him radiating contempt for Harris and his channels, for the El-Masris and their denials, for her and her uselessness. She thinks of the ways he has shut her out, rejected her overtures of support and offers of comfort. She thinks—even though the pain of it very nearly paralyzes her—of him vowing never to forgive her if she makes promises she cannot keep.

She contemplates every slight, every time he has lashed out, and every step he has taken away from her, choosing instead to withdraw into himself. She recognizes every move as one from her own damned playbook, every single one is a move she has perfected through practice, and he has, apparently, been studying at the hands of a master all this time. 

She thinks of how she has banished him once, twice, three times. She hears herself telling him that it’s over, that it’s her life, that she has no reason to believe anything he says. She takes in the scope of all the people she has shut down over the years and cut off for daring to ask about her mother’s death—for daring to suggest that she did not have to bear that burden of sorrow alone. She thinks about the set of flip numbers she doesn’t have, but really needs to have hanging in her apartment: _It has been zero days since Kate Beckett has abused and alienated every person in her life for the heinous crime of trying to help._

She thinks of Bracken twice over—of leaving him in her bed to follow through on some plan held together with duct tape, frayed twine, and delusional hubris. She thinks of folding away McManus’s letter—quickly, quickly—then getting him out of the way. _Why don’t you go get some rest?_ She has done this to him so many times and it hurts coming and going. It hurts that she’s done it—that she’s constantly doing it—and it hurts that he’s doing it now _._

It’s such a big conversation, this apology. It’s _serious_ and daunting and she hardly knows how to begin. With an apology, she thinks. With a promise that she’ll try—she’ll _try_ to keep that set of flip numbers going up and up, if he’ll swear to do the same. 

She thinks that’s how it should probably begin, but then he’s there and the conversation is simply too big. He is home, and it’s all she can do to wind her arms tight around him and whisper— _Please don’t do anything like that again without me, okay?_

It’s a plea. It’s a vow. It’s an apology. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Mental floppily numbness: Not a thing


	17. Cinéma Vérité—Scared to Death (5 x 17)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s pitching her Nikki Heat ghost stories. He’s pitching her Nikki Heat meets Frankenstein, meets the Wolfman meets the every zombie in Night of the Living Dead. 

> _“Is this you making your own movie?”  
> _ _— Wes Craven, Scared to Death (5 x 17)_

* * *

He’s pitching her Nikki Heat ghost stories. He’s pitching her Nikki Heat meets Frankenstein, meets the Wolfman meets the every zombie in _Night of the Living Dead_. 

“Nope,” he screws up his face as though the’s working hard to remember something. He’s dodging her weak, sleepy fists with ease. “Have to strike that one. Been there, done that.”

“Nikki has _not_ been there.” With a Herculean effort she manages to crack open one eyelid wide enough to glare at him. “Nikki has _never_ met a zombie.” The expression of smug satisfaction that crosses her face is short-lived. “They weren’t zombies.” 

She manages to land a punch—or at least her fist makes contact with his solar plexus. Calling it a punch might be overstatement, but it still sends the breath _oof_ ing out of him. He has to give her that one. There was not a single zombie in the crowd in that alley—a crushing disappointment at the time, but his brain is in playful mode at the moment. It puts a pin in the notion of _Nikki Heat and the Case of the Cosplay Zombies_ , then moves quickly on. 

He captures the hand—the former fist—that has come to rest just below his ribs and rolls to face her. His free hand creeps through the blanket terrain in search of _her_ free hand, just in case it belatedly wants to get in on the anti-zombie action. Just in case it wants to start its own campaign protesting his bold proposal to infuse Nikki’s world with the supernatural. 

“They weren’t zombies,” he concedes. He kisses the tip of her nose. “But Nikki could come up against Nigel Molloy …” 

He waits for her to discover that he’s managed to take possession of both her hands—that she’s powerless to act on her violent impulses. The look of absolute consternation on her face is delicious. He stores it up, not for a moment of Nikki–Rook intimacy coming to a novel near you soon, for his own private collection. 

“He’d be dumb.” She surprises him with a half-hearted kick to the shin, then twines her calf between his, pulling herself closer to his body. It’s a mixed message if ever there was one, but he’s glad to be on the receiving end. “He’d be a _super_ dumb. One of those dumb immortal guys that dies, like _all_ the time. Like …” 

She’s worked up about the limitations of an immortal Nigel Molloy on a character level. She’s drumming her knuckles against his ribs, borrowing momentum from the fingers he still has wrapped around each of her wrists. She’s groping for a name, so he offers up a string of them. 

“Darkseid? Ra’s Al Ghul?” He knows there are a million of them. He knows exactly the type of character she means, but she’s cute and warm and unguarded, and it’s kind of hard to focus. “Um …” 

“Mister Sinister,” she announces. She leans hard into the _S_ s, and he’s astonished by her ability to be legitimately sultry—a legitimate vixen—while half asleep and calling up the names of third tier _X-Men_ villains. “He’d be _that_ dumb. No Nigel Molloy.” 

And with that, the prosecution rests. He could go on, of course. He could Green Goblin Nigel, having Leopold take over. He could take a sharp turn into fairytales. He could have the skeptical Nikki forced to accept the existence of gingerbread houses and cross-dressing big bad wolves. 

He could go on and on, teasing this sleepy version of her that he loves to keep talking—he love the things she gives away in these unguarded moments. He really could go on tonight, but she pinches him on the hip—hard—to get his attention. 

“Why?” She blinks and tries to focus on the question. Her fingers curl into annoyed fists as she tries to flesh out the thought. “Why do you want to wreck Nikki?” she demands to know. She’s defiant, at first, with her lip pushed out. She’s performing for him. She’s sleepy, but in the spirit of things, but something occurs to her. She turns wistful. She turns sad. “She’s got a ghost already.” 

The breath goes _oof_ ing out of him, all over again. She’s surprised him in her usual way. Half asleep and wistful, she turns the game on its head. She tells a necessary truth, even though he was joking about saddling Nikki with some kind of _Scooby Do_ o element in the interests of keeping sleepy Kate around as long as possible. 

“She does,” he murmurs with his lips pressed to her forehead. “Nikki already has a ghost.” 

“No more,” she tells him. She rests her cheek against his shoulder as though that settles it, and he supposes it does. “No more ghosts.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So lame I have nothing about its not-a-thing-ness


	18. Deflection—The Wild Rover (5 x 18)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s all in good fun at first, the way she keeps hounding him about Jordan. It’s mostly in fun, though there’s a streak of oily black vengeance running right through the middle of it. Nobody likes a middle-of-the-night Chatty Cathy, especially when (a) Chatty Cathy is not forthcoming with any juicy secrets—at least not any readily intelligible ones—and (b) Chatty Cathy’s chatter is contributing, in no small part, to a decidedly unwelcome bout of sleeplessness of unknown origin. 

> _“What would you do without me, huh?”_   
>  _— Jenny Duffy O’Malley Ryan, The Wild Rover (5 x 18)_

* * *

It’s all in good fun at first, the way she keeps hounding him about Jordan. It’s mostly in fun, though there’s a streak of oily black vengeance running right through the middle of it. Nobody likes a middle-of-the-night Chatty Cathy, especially when (a) Chatty Cathy is not forthcoming with any juicy secrets—at least not any readily intelligible ones—and (b) Chatty Cathy’s chatter is contributing, in no small part, to a decidedly unwelcome bout of sleeplessness of unknown origin. 

It’s as innocent as all that from the crime scene back to the precinct and all the way through the early stages of whatever’s going on with Ryan. It’s just a little bit of throwback fun as she needles him enough to make him jumpy when it’s clear he’d like to be devoting his full attention to the soap opera—complete with melodramatic slaps to the face—unfolding in front of them. 

But the soap opera suddenly shifts from fun-filled daytime cheese to high-stakes prime time: Ryan, they learn, once went deep undercover with the Irish mob. Ryan is going undercover again. He is walking into a situation that was already dangerously unstable back in the good old days when Jimmy Whelan had yet to plunge face first into a vat of chocolate cupcake batter. He—the group’s most sensitive soul, everyone’s gawky, earnest kid brother—is walking into a nuclear reactor about to go critical, because it is the right thing to do. It is the honorable thing to do what their friends at the federal level swear they neither can nor will. 

It’s not quite as innocent then, the way she keeps on teasing him about his nocturnal transmissions. It all takes on a decidedly sharper tone. It borders on mean when she flat out refuses the coffee he’s brought her as a conciliatory offering. She’s far from being kind here, but she needs the distraction. She needs to keep her mind from constantly flipping through the twenty-six volume set of things that could go horribly wrong for Ryan, so she keeps flogging the manufactured Jordan scandal. She keeps tweaking him about it. 

She’ll apologize to him later, she figures. When Ryan is safely back in his sweater vest and all of them can take a deep breath again, she’ll do some between the lines—or between the sheets, more likely—making it up to him. In the mean time, she’s wondering where he is. There’s far too much uncertainty on her murder board at the moment. It’s stressing her out and not giving her a damned thing that’s useful to stress on. She could stand to bleed off some of that tension by making him sweat. 

That’s the plan, at least, until she stumbles across him with his back to the wall in one of the shadowy corners just off the break room. It’s still the plan when she stumbles across him, in fact. She’s working on some devastating innuendo about him waiting for Jordan in dimly lit hallways. He doesn’t see her coming, and she thinks that’s all the better to tweak him with until she catches sight of his face, she catches sight of his hunched, unfamiliar posture.  
  
“Castle?” She makes her way slowly toward him as though he’s some kind of skittish woodland creature. “What are you doing back here?” 

“Nothing.” He shakes himself. He arranges his face into a reflexive smile. “Nothing. I was just giving Esposito a pep talk.” He hooks a thumb over his shoulder—the wrong shoulder—then looks confused. “He’s uh … you know. His mind keeps going to all the things that could go wrong, even though Ryan’s obviously got this thing nailed. I mean, that haircut, right? That’s commitment. But you know Espo. Always the dark cloud.” 

“Espo. The dark cloud.” It’s not quite a statement, it’s not quite a question. She can’t get a read on him, and it’s worrisome. “I think we’re all—“ There’s a hitch in her voice. There’s a whole-body hitch that stalls her out. “We’re all worried,” is all she can manage. 

“He came to me about the doctor. The thing with him and Jenny. He was asking if I—if I ever had any—“ He shakes his head. “I didn’t know what he was asking and I just went on and on about Alexis being a surprise, about how we weren’t even trying and all of a sudden, whoa!” 

“You didn’t know, Castle.” She reaches out a hand to touch his elbow. She tries not to laugh. It’s not particularly funny, and still she has to try, because there’s something a little hysterical welling up in her. “You couldn’t have—“ 

“I told Esposito,” he blurts, cutting her off. “About the fertility doctor. That they were going. I felt bad and I didn’t want to feel bad. I wanted it to be funny, so I told Esposito.” 

He hangs his head. She laughs. She can’t help it, at this point. She laughs and he lifts his chin high enough to shoot her a dirty look. She takes a step toward him, and he takes aa step toward her. They risk an awkward half-embrace in the shadowy corner.

“You’ll make it up to him,” she whispers against his shoulder. “He’ll come home and you’ll buy him like a hundred beers. You’ll make it up to him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Ryan’s swimmers are things. But that’s not what this is about. 


	19. On the Que Vive—The Lives of Others (5 x 19)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wants to know how it was done. Every detail. He wants to know exactly how she could have pulled that off—a multi-day extravaganza with a cast of thousands—or a dozen at least. He absolutely wants to know. 

> _“So you were watching the whole time?”  
>  — Javier Esposito, The Lives of Others (5 x 19)_

* * *

He wants to know how it was done. Every detail. He wants to _know_ exactly how she could have pulled that off—a multi-day extravaganza with a cast of thousands—or a dozen at least. He absolutely wants to know. 

“No you don’t, Castle,” she says for the one-millionth time since they woke up the day after his birthday. She is rushing around, trying to get ready for work. He is wheeling after her, even though a two-person pile-up seems inevitable. She whirls in place and has to dance her way clear of his extended foot. She loses her balance and lands hard on the arm of the wheelchair with her face an inch from his. “Magician’s code,” she whispers. 

“Boyfriend exception,” he grumbles. “Invalid boyfriend exception. There’s got to be one of those.” 

He makes a grab for her. He tries to pull her into his lap with an eye to pursuing other methods of interrogation, but she’s too quick for him. She darts around to the back of the wheelchair and drapes her arms over his shoulders. She presses her cheek to his. 

“No exceptions. Not even for invalid _man_ friends.” She swivels her chin on his shoulder to face him. She arches an eyebrow and he might spontaneously combust. He’s her _man friend._ “Besides, wouldn’t knowing ruin it?” She glances at her watch and curses under breath. She presses a searing kiss to his lips and then she’s gone. 

“It wouldn’t,” he calls after her, but the door has already swung shut behind her. “It _wouldn’t,”_ he tells the loft at large. 

He rolls around a while, from flat surface to flat surface, turning over vases and sculptures and coasters and knick-knacks. He’s sweeping for bugs, kind of. He keeps getting distracted by fairly detailed fantasies of her getting decked out in head-to-toe black and meeting up with her connection for way-above-commercial grade spy gear. He gets distracted by the fact that he’s picturing a calf-length black leather duster that somehow— _somehow_ —is not actually part of her real-world collection, and we interrupt this half-assed bug sweeping to do some online shopping for the woman who does _not,_ as it turns out, quite have everything in the coat department. 

It tires him out, the wheeling around, the turning over of things, the half-hearted sweeping for bugs. The fantasies _definitely_ tire him out. He dozes in the chair awhile, and his brain keeps busy putting together wonderfully improbable scenarios—the binoculars are some next-generation tech she had to trade NYPD secrets for. Any shift of their weight and a bank of security cameras somewhere deep beneath the Twelfth Precinct goes live and she slides down the bat pole to orchestrate her crack team’s every move. Or maybe it’s motion sensors on his wheel chair, or maybe she’s tapped into the sadly outdated lipstick security camera he installed, like, three years ago or something and keeps meaning to upgrade. 

He sleeps and wakes, sleeps and wakes. When it seems like his eyes might stay open a while, he digs up an oversized drawing pad that might actually be older than Alexis and sketches out a rough blueprint of the loft and the rental apartment. He shades in sight lines and dreams up wildly complex signaling systems that involve monitoring his texts, the opening and closing of the fridge, the lifting and re-seating of the coffee pot. 

He whiles away the day just like that, accomplishing nothing other than a loft in mild disarray, a loft with everything just slightly out of place. She notices when she gets home. With her detective’s eye, she notices every single thing that is a millimeter or two out of place. She laughs at him. She pops the pizza she’s brought for dinner into the oven to reheat, then she laughs over her shoulder and against the back of his neck, in passing, as she makes her quick, efficient way around the room restoring each and every thing to its exactly right place. 

She chuckles over his blueprints and the increasing desperation evident in the notes he’s scrawled along their margins. She folds her slice like a true New Yorker and makes absolutely no response to any of the guesses he makes about assets she must have deployed to report his movements, surveillance equipment she _must_ have used. She makes absolutely no reply until she’s finished with her pizza—until she’s given the untouched, rapidly cooling slice on his plate a long, heavy look. 

“I’m just wondering about the ethics of the situation,” he calls out as she walks away from the table. He tries to roll after her, but he’s tangled up with one of the chairs. “Who did you compromise? Who knew what and when? These are _reasonable_ questions, Becket!” 

He finally frees himself. He spins around, about to take-off after her, but she’s already there. She’s already towering over him with something hidden behind her back.

“Do you want to know?” She narrows her eyes, and as though she’s not satisfied with merely towering, she leans in to loom. “Do you _really_ want to know?” 

“Yes,” he says quickly. “Yes, please.” 

She holds out for one long, theatrical moment, then produces a stack of small white envelopes from behind her back. She flashes each one—hand-addressed in her bold style—under his nose before tossing it on the table. He recognizes names and he doesn’t. It’s mix and match, but he understands what they are. They’re thank you notes, dozens of them. 

“I _know_ you, stupid.” She flashes the last envelope and pivots on a heel to drop into his lap. “I had help, but I know you. That’s the magic.” 

“Oh.” His arms snake around her waist. She’s being gentle with him, but he pulls her fiercely into his body. He whispers into the ticklish skin behind her ear. “That’s how it’s done.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Poor Castle. Utterly thingless. 


	20. Second—The Fast and the Furriest (5 x 20)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s not exactly sure what she’s doing here. Having dinner, yes, or she will be having dinner in the very near future. So, she is having dinner, obviously. But she’s not exactly sure about the here, the what, or the why of it. 

> _“You’re going to leave me here alone?”  
>  — Richard Castle, The Fast and the Furriest (5 x 20)_

* * *

She’s not exactly sure what she’s doing here. Having dinner, yes, or she _will_ be having dinner in the very near future. So, she is having dinner, _obviously._ But she’s not exactly sure about the here, the what, or the why of it. 

“Thank you,” he whispers as he moves to usher her into the vestibule where Alexis is chatting with an earnest-looking young man who is about one and a half times the height he should be for his weight. The _thank you_ is intense. The young man and Alexis are a pair of surprises. She’s not getting any kind of clarity on the here, the what, or the why, and she seems to have added in some questions about the who, but she’s in it now. She smiles and rides along as he places a somewhat desperate hand on the small of her back and makes a too-hearty introduction. “Jonah, may I present Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD?” 

The kid blanches at her professional title, which was the point, she assumes. She extends her hand and takes a step toward him. She just so happens to catch Castle’s toe with the heavy heel of her boot in the process. “Jonah, hello,” she says loudly enough to cover Castle’s pained yelp as she shakes the kid’s sweaty hand as warmly as she can. 

“And you may—“ he grimaces and shoots her a look that he has no business shooting her under the circumstances. “You may not recognize Alexis out of her Blue Man Group make-up.” 

She doesn’t glare at him for that. She doesn’t stomp his toe. Any punishment she might mete out would be _de trop,_ given the look his slightly-blue-around-the-hairline daughter is shooting him. 

“Beckett, hi.” Alexis moves in for a brief and surprising half hug. She, too, whispers, _thank you_ , and Kate escalates her concerns to what the hell she’s doing and why the _hell_ she’s doing it here. 

Just then, the host sees that their party is complete. It leaves her no opportunity to pull him aside. It leaves her trapped against the wall on the banquette as Alexis and her … friend? … take the chairs on the room side of the table. 

The quotation marks around Jonah’s name open up one possibility for _what_ she’s doing here, though not necessarily _why_ she’s doing it. If Jonah is the new Max, that might explain him leaning into _Detective_ and _NYPD._ If Jonah is the new Max, he might be deluded enough to renew his ancient plea that she look out for Alexis—with extreme prejudice—in the event of friskiness. If that’s the case, she plans to take full advantage of the cover offered by the long linen table cloths when it comes to kicking his shins black and blue. But as the evening proceeds—haltingly proceeds—it doesn’t seem his shins are at risk, at least not for that reason. 

Jonah, it seems is an entrepreneur. Jonah, it seems, is a visionary. Jonah, it seems, is the genius who is going to save the eight million people of New York from premature death related to sundry respiratory illnesses. Ninety-nine percent of this hard sell does not come from Jonah, who is blushing hard and hiding behind his menu, his water glass, the bus boy whenever possible. 

Jonah is not the new Max, she doesn’t think, but Jonah’s bamboo venture might be the money pit that has had Alexis doing some foraging on the home front. She digs her fingernails into Castle’s thigh and thanks the linens for their service in concealing the deed. She meets his gaze in a sidelong glance that shifts toward Jonah for a fraction of a second. He nods his head nearly imperceptibly and rubs his thumb and forefinger together—the universal sign for money. 

It’s a wordless conversation that occupies a handful of seconds, and that manages to clear up the what. He orders the Chateaubriand with a pointed look at Alexis, and that clears up the here—the memory of his Elegy for a Scramble clears up the here. But then there’s the why. The why remains elusive. The why remains _interesting._ Because he called her. He begged her to meet him here. He swore he’d explain later— _later_. 

She’s not sure he will explain, though. She’s not sure he can or needs to explain. She thinks she has a pretty good idea about the why, and it’s a strangely touching surprise. 

The evening unfolds. Alexis clues into the fact that she’s embarrassing Jonah with her hype work. Jonah comes out of his shell a little, and it’s clear that he’s smart and not without some business acumen, but he’s _young_. He’s _so_ young.

But they live through the dinner. They all live, and he insists on putting Jonah and Alexis in a cab back to Columbia. Alexis rolls her eyes and protests. Jonah and Kate stand awkwardly by, and Castle wins the day.

“So she gave him all her money?” She slips her arm through his as he waves at Alexis as the cab pulls away. 

“Every dime.” He shakes his head. “He’s a nice kid, though. Smart. And it’s not _completely_ crazy.” 

“Not completely,” she agrees. “But do you need to yell about it?” 

He hugs her arm tight to his side. “I need to yell about it a little.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Shin bruises, half-moon finger nail marks. Not things. 


	21. Jitters—The Squab and the Quail (5 x 21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He feels like he has been sent—unjustly sent—to his room to think about what he’s done. At least he imagines this is what it feels to be sent to his room to think about what he’s done. Let it never be said that Martha Rodgers was inclined to employ standards from the Great American Parenting book. 

> _“_ _That’s what this is all about?”  
> _ _— Kate Beckett, The Squab and the Quail (5 x 21)_

* * *

He feels like he has been sent—unjustly sent—to his room to think about what he’s done. At least he imagines this is what it feels to be sent to his room to think about what he’s done. Let it never be said that Martha Rodgers was inclined to employ standards from the Great American Parenting book. 

But the thing is, he _has_ thought about what he’s done. He regrets the Patel incident. He makes no excuses for it—at least not any excuses he hasn’t already ill-advisedly made. In fact, now that he has landed himself in exile and the breathtaking contrast between her skin and the French blue of his dress shirt is a distant memory, he had nothing but contempt for his own poor choices in the moment and in the aftermath.

And Patel aside, there is not a supernatural being that is, was, or shall be can doubt his true remorse for leaving her off his Last Supper List—especially in favor of Eric “Press Gang” Vaughn. He would happily emerge from his room, chastened and bowed, to explain exactly how very _over_ Eric Vaughn he is. He would happily relay the strange fact that he’s just had twelve spots open up on his Last Supper List, and every place card bears her name. 

He’d be positively ecstatic to do all of that, but it’s not just that he’s been banished to his room without TV or action figure privileges. It’s that she’s gone—she’s off with the smarmy poseur himself—and everyone in their mutual lives is lining up to tell him, in both subtext and main text, exactly just how worried he should be about that. 

And the sad truth of _that_ is, it’s kind of depressingly convenient. He’s pretty sure that if he weren’t confined to his room and under strict instructions to contemplate his actions, he’d be wandering the city like that little bird from the children’s book, asking anyone and everyone in his path: _Should I be worried?_ So the fact that the question, unasked, has been so repeatedly answered is a real time saver. 

Except he suspects it might be the wrong question. He suspects that every single one of the constellation of questions that hover around Eric Vaughn, every single one he’s tempted to ask— and every snarky one he _does_ ask about sleep shorts and champagne and summer camp—is the wrong one. 

He would like very much for what’s currently ailing him to be about Eric Vaughn. Eric Vaughn is someone who can be thrown out of a window. He is mere flesh, and he might stumble into the path of a crash of stampeding rhinos. He could come over all genius-y any day of the week and tragically walk out into traffic. Even if Eric Vaughn were the problem, he’s a solvable one. 

But it’s his mother, of all people, whose drive-by Eric Vaughn Truth Commission has him thinking not just about Patel or one stupid omission from one stupid list. She has him thinking about Patel as a symptom—about Vaughn himself as a high-handed, unctuous symptom of something more serious. 

There isn’t a ring on her finger. There isn’t a ring within a country mile of her finger, and he hasn’t given that much thought. He hasn’t given it much _conscious_ thought, anyway. He thinks the ulcer he’s currently working on may be symptomatic of some fairly consistent _un_ conscious thought. 

He’s thrown himself into being happy with this—with the two of them as they are, here and now. It’s not exactly a chore. He is deliriously happy to be with her, to work with her, to practically _live_ with her. But now in his room, with his feet metaphorically dangling over the edge of the top bunk, he has the strong sense that the pointed here-and-now-ness of the two of them is not exactly a naturally occurring phenomenon. 

He doesn’t know what that does or does not have to do with rings or fingers or commitments. He doesn’t know whether any or all of those three things have anything to do with one another, honestly. 

He _does_ know, at least in his more ulcer-free moments, that rings and whose fingers they aren’t on have nothing to do with Eric Vaughn. He is not worried about her parading around the presidential suite in her Officer Naughty jammies just to spite him for Patel and his general cluelessness. He’s not worried about her succumbing to Vaughn’s hard-sell tactics because she’s been waiting for him to bring up rings and fingers and whatever. He knows her better than that, and he _does_ trust her. 

But that doesn’t mean he isn’t worried. It doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Eric Vaugh, Rubber-Faced, Oil-Slicked Clown, is NOT A THING. This sequence preserves the US airing order. 


	22. Testimonial—Still (5 x 22)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She ruins their celebration. Early drinks at the Old Haunt. Early drinks for everyone—It’s everyone from the precinct, plus Jenny and Lanie. It is—there are—drinks, and even Captain Gates. Even Perlmutter. And in every significant look between them, every innocent, then openly PG-13 touch between them speaks of the promise of a private celebration—just the two of them—back at home. But she ruins it. 

> _“Did you see the hearts?”  
>  — Richard Castle, Still (5 x 22)_

* * *

She ruins their celebration. Early drinks at the Old Haunt. Early drinks for everyone. It’s everyone from the precinct, plus Jenny and Lanie. It is—there are—drinks, and even Captain Gates. Even _Perlmutter._ And in every significant look between them, every innocent, then openly PG-13 touch between them speaks of the promise of a private celebration—just the two of them—back at home. But she ruins it. 

“You didn’t ruin anything, Kate,” he insists in the dark. They are lying in absolute dark. There is some kind of Lovecraftian beast that has slipped in behind her left eyeball. Its tentacles are sunk deep into her brain, pulsing. Hence the dark. And the quiet. Hence the _practically nonexistent_ volume setting she didn’t know he had until just now. 

“It’s 6:15. I’m in bed. I ruined it,” she says faintly. 

It’s so much worse than the fact that she’s in bed an hour before sunset. She’s in a disgustingly worn and dirty t-shirt and what has to be his most enormous pair of sweats, because she’s freezing, and she can’t stand anything touching her skin. And she might throw up at any second. And they are not out with their friends, toasting to life. They are not standing with their arms around one another, freely and openly after nearly a year of constantly looking over their shoulders, second guessing every interaction and wondering if it was too flirty, too hostile—if it was drawing attention. 

“I get to be in bed with you.” He’s carefully keeping his distance but even his breath is almost too much for her twitching, aching skin. He seems to sense it. He inches carefully backward. “As long as I’m quiet and far away, I get to be in bed with you?” 

“Did I say that?” She makes a sound that might be weak laughter. It jostles her brain and sloshes the blood around in all the tiny vessels in and around her skull. It is a very bad idea. “I said that.” 

“You said that.” She can sense his fingers twitching with the effort of resisting the urge to touch her, to run a soothing hand along her ribs and curve of her hip. “My reward for getting you out of those skinny jeans.” 

“Don’t,” she pleads. “Don’t make me laugh.” She lifts a hand to shade her eyes as if this much conversation, this much movement have beaten back the dark and mad ether room pulse with painful light. 

“Sorry.” His voice is low and tight and unhappy. “And there’s nothing—? I think my mother has some pills—tablets. Something she takes—“ 

“I’ll just throw it up.” Her stomach is rolling and she tastes salt in the back of her throat, even now. She pulls in air through her nose and tries to will her stomach back into submission. 

“Right.” She feels the mattress sink a fraction of an inch as he shifts with infinite care, not wanting to jostle her. “Have you—“ He stops himself. The argument inside his head is nearly loud enough for her to hear. “Have you always had them? I mean these … this kind? Your whole life?” 

She has to laugh. She would have to laugh if the tentacles were not wriggling their way down into her cheekbones and the roots of her teeth. If the tears weren’t pooling in the corners of her eyes from the pain, should would definitely be laughing at the fact that he wants to take care of her—he would gladly take the pain into his own body if it would spare her any and all of this—and yet lying at a distance, in the dark, he can’t stop interrogating her about the particulars of her life. 

“Not my whole life.” The statement makes her want to punch herself in the head give her the illusion of control. She has not had this devastating pain for her whole life. “Since the shooting. Since after I came back.” 

“Oh,” he says, sounding small, and if she thought she could stand the contact, she’d run her fingers through his hair and sooth him back to smiles. 

“They’re good.” She grits her teeth. She can’t quite leave it at that, not when, at the moment, she’d truly shove her head into a fire just to see if it would help. “Theyr’re when there’s a good thing. After a bad thing.” Something releases as she says it. One tentacle, maybe, goes slack, and maybe it’s the healing power of sharing something with him. 

“Surviving what you did today is definitely a good thing.” His voice catches, but he won’t risk clearing his throat. He won’t risk banishment for not honoring the agreement. “I can see why you have a visitor.” 

“No.” Her face scrunches up in effort, in displeasure, and it feels as if her facial muscles are dragging nails across the bone beneath. “Not surviving. Gates knows.” She reaches out for his hand. She squeezes it, even though the skin-to-skin contact is like faulty wiring sparking and burning in short bursts. She wills him to understand, to get what she’s saying, even though coherent words are buried deep. “Everyone knows. And you know. That’s the good thing.” 

“Oh.” The syllable is filled with quiet awe. With joy that pops along the surface of his skin. “That is a good thing.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Migraines are the absolute absence of nothing. 


	23. Shade—The Human Factor (2 x 23)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mid-Spring is no time for ghost stories, especially cheap knock-offs of Dickens ghost stories that that are decidedly a December thing. But Jared Stack is a cheap knock-off of Christmas Something or Other. Eric Vaughn is his wacky sidekick. He’s less literally cheap, but every bit as much of a knock-off, and who the hell are these two jerks to haunt him anyway? 

> _“What kind of a pattern?”  
>  — Kate Beckett, The Human Factor (5 x 23)_

* * *

Mid-Spring is no time for ghost stories, especially cheap knock-offs of Dickens ghost stories that that are decidedly a December thing. But Jared Stack is a cheap knock-off of Christmas Something or Other. Eric Vaughn is his wacky sidekick. He’s less literally cheap, but every bit as much of a knock-off, and who the hell are these two jerks to haunt him anyway? 

It’s a dumb question for Mid-Spring. It’s a dumb question for the middle of the night, particularly after a well-earned, end-of-the-day glass of Zinfandel, and a collaborative shower that was Satisfying with a capital _S._ This is the time for neither knock-off ghosts nor dumb questions, yet here he is with the pillow pulled fruitlessly close around his ears to block out Vaughn’s smarmy voice echoing— _You know, that’s an extraordinary woman you have there—_ and Stack’s update from the Mixed-Up Files of Captain Obvious— _She’s a force to be reckoned with._

If either one of these clowns was at all worth his time, he’d point to the _Heat Wave_ dedication, which is where Vaughn obviously stole the word from, by the way. And as for Stack, he’d cite chapter and verse about every suspect, every witness, every obstructionist bureaucrat that he has watched with relish as they have tried and failed to reckon with the force she is. But they are not worth his time. They are _not_ any links forged by him, and they can get the hell off his damned lawn. 

He uncurls his fingers from the pillow, or at least he tries to. He’s been clenching so tight, his hands both feel like they should be swinging around inside a plexiglass box, utterly failing to get a grip on stuffed animals or tantalizing electronic prizes. He shifts on to his side and takes in the sight of her, curled on _her_ side. He reaches out to trail his fingers down the dotted line of her spine, but lets his hand fall away. He doesn’t want to wake her. It doesn’t seem fair to wake her, given that this—whatever _this_ actually is—seems to be his baggage. 

He wonders suddenly about Stack and _Nothing_. He’d taken her at her word and assumed the moment alone he’d requested had amounted to requiring a blood oath of her to never reveal the details of the case to anyone. He’d assumed it had been nothing more than a wrong-headed attempt to intimidate her into doing something other than what is right, fair, and whatever he hell she had wanted to do in the first place. But now, in the middle of the night with unexpected chains rattling, he wonders if it was something else—if he … hit on her? 

It’s the only alternative to federal strong-arming that he can think of, but it doesn’t sound right inside his head. The possibility of that isn’t even a cheap knock-off ghost. It’s a late-in-the-episode Scooby-Doo minion with a sheet thrown over his head, running in and out of rooms in the creepy old mansion. It’s a Scooby-Doo minion–ghost from a Scrappy-Doo episode. But even as his Mid-Spring, middle-of-the-night mind shakes off the possibility that Stack was trying to put the sardonic, stuffed-shirt moves on her, he’s not reassured. 

He is stupidly, unfairly haunted enough that he kicks the covers off and tucks her back in so that she won’t miss the warmth of his body right away. She won’t miss it enough that she wakes and has to come grumpily looking for him. 

He starts off in his office, more out of habit than any real possibility he’ll write or find any kind of haunt repellant there. He does open the half-assed journal he keeps on his laptop and scrolls up to chuckle over the heights of creativity to which his intense dislike of Eric Vaughn had propelled him. The enjoyment is short-lived, though. He thinks back to her admission about the kiss. He thinks back to the admission that she was talking to this man just the moment before he tried to kiss her. She—Kate Preternaturally Self-Contained Beckett, Kate Preternaturally Silent Beckett—was talking to a _stranger_ about him, about _relationships_. 

He shuts the laptop with ill-advised force and paces out into the living room. He tries the couch and each of the chairs. He tries stretching out on his side on the rug, letting his unfocused eyes roam over the miniature terrain meant for his model tank. He lets the hurt trickle out of the place in his heart where he’s kept it stopped up. He lets his mind roam through the dark places where the answers might lie to the question of why the hell she would talk to Eric Vaughn about the _R_ word when she has never, not once, talked to him about it. 

She finds him like that, on the rug, on his side, with his mind roaming the dark places that Vaughn haunts, that Stack haunts. She stands over him, grumpily peering down.

“Castle. The bed is cold.” She nudges at his hip with her bare toe. She’s shivering in air that’s far cooler than she likes it at night. “What’re you doing?”

“Nothing,” he says when he can manage it. He rolls half on his back to look up at her, blinking and grumpy and cold. He’s a fool he realizes. He’s not sure how, he’s just certain he is. He reaches out to wrap a palm around her ankle, as though he can hold on that way. “Ghosts.” He shakes his head.

“No.” She reaches down for him. She plucks impatiently at the hem of his shirt. “Spring. Dumb time for ghosts.” 

“I know.” He rises. She’s stomping back to the bedroom but he catches her wrist. He catches her in a tight embrace. “That’s what I thought.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Dickens knockoffs? Like. How would you tell the difference? Not a thing. 


	24. Both/And—Watershed (5 x 24)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world is made up of landmines. The world is made up of lifelines. Both these things are true. One is easier to remember than the other. One is easier to see. 

> _“_ _Why do you think you have to choose?”  
> _ _— Jim Beckett, Watershed (5 x 24)_

* * *

The world is made up of landmines. The world is made up of lifelines. Both these things are true. One is easier to remember than the other. One is easier to see. 

She has buried the landmines herself. She has sown them all around her like bloodthirsty seeds, beginning with the trip. Beginning before that—with Stack. Before that—with Vaughn. Before that. Before … 

She heard somewhere, she read somewhere, he told her in some idle moment that it’s common to use goats where mines are thick on the ground. It’s common to let them pick their delicate way across unfamiliar terrain until the violence rears its head, until the goat is no long picking its delicate way anywhere. 

She’s thinking of that as she stares out the floor-to-ceiling window over a city that she thinks of through the eyes of her eighth grade self on an overnight field trip. She is rendering the memory in his voice, whether or not he is, in fact, the one who told her of the tragedy of goats, of the Hitchcockian suspense of landmines. His voice fills her head entirely before she turns and follows Freedman into his office. His voice. It’s a landmine. 

It throws her off her game—his voice talking about goats, about Princess Diana, about the Queen’s anti-goat, pro-landmine agenda. The eternal experience of him making her laugh, of him taking her mind off something, of him tugging her kicking and screaming away from work because she’d been at it too long for no real reason than old habits. The sudden, pervasive presence of _him_ where he has no place throws her utterly off her game, and she has almost tanked the whole interview before it even begins. But she does not, somehow, tank the interview. She doesn’t think she has. She doesn’t think. All the way back to the airport. All the way home. She does not think. 

Home is a conceptual landmine, and that breaks her fucking heart. She leans her head against the thick window of the plane and imagines herself a tourist—a visitor who’ll only see this sight from time to time and through the eyes of an outsider, through the eyes of someone who is constantly shocked but the changes—this building going up, this one coming down. This place closing, and this cute thing? It’s been open for months and she is shocked. 

In her mind, she has already moved on. She has crossed unfamiliar terrain, and in the either–or of her merciless psyche, there is no going back. 

Home is a literal landmine, too. Her clothing is a disaster out of context. Her sober suit and a crisp, absolutely boring blouse blouse buttoned all the way up to her chin are an ill-timed confession in navy blue. Her hair, sprayed into a neat, immovable bun at the nape of her neck with its one million precisely placed pins is a confession there is no point in making now. The goat has left the building. The goat has picked its delicate way well out into no man’s land, and there is no point. 

She has a text about a body the very second the plane is on the ground. She has three, four, five voice mails with his name beside them, with chipper recordings that she can’t bear to listen to, because in her either–or mind, she’s already left him. It’s already done, and yet here she is in a tell-all suit. Her either–or mind is getting ahead of itself. 

There is a random assortment of clothing in the back of her car. A dark t-shirt, a blazer with a cracked button and a tear in the lining she’s meant to take to the tailor forever. There’s a pair of jeans jumbled into her gym bag for some reason that her inner goat finds fortunate in the moment. She wrestles her body into everything in the driver’s seat of her car, in the shadows of short-term parking. She excavates hairpins, and she is savage with the brush in freeing her hair. 

It’s no use. The quick change is no help at all. She, herself, is a landmine. She has had nothing but opportunities to confess, to teleport her off this unfamiliar terrain, rather than pick her delicate way across it until she’s not picking her way anywhere anymore. 

She could have confessed when he asked— _You never did tell me what Stack wanted to talk to you about._

She could have confessed right after she’d closed herself in her bedroom, door shut tight, lights off, blinds drawn, and in the gloom, squinted to make out the number on Stack’s card, and dialed. 

She could have confessed during the days of phone tag, the days of overtures, the days of noise about getting her down there for a face-to-face. She could have confessed at any moment during that raw, tempest-tossed period when she wanted it, didn’t want it, wanted it again, believed she’d get it, believed the very idea of her getting it was a delusion, believed they would string her along indefinitely and then nothing would come of it after all. 

She could have confessed, rather than let the lies of omission pile up. She could have confessed, but she has not. Instead, she has sowed landmines. She sows them even now with evasions, blank looks, homeopathic truths, and merciless tugs on the conversational steering wheel when he strays too close to unfamiliar terrain. 

* * *

There are lifelines, too, if she’ll only grab hold of any one of them. 

There is, unexpectedly, Captain Gates. She is shocked—an almost literal electric jolt—by the direct summons, by the revelation that Freedman has called the Captain. She is shocked, because she is apparently some kind of idiot who doesn’t know how resumes or jobs work. She is some kind of idiot standing there, shocked, as one of hundred landmines detonates and she is discovered. 

But there is, unexpectedly, Captain Gates saying all the things she has not said to herself—that she has not allowed herself to say. She has drowned out this narrative with the lies she has been telling herself for weeks—commission sitting cozily alongside omission. _No chance, Probably not, Just a long shot._ These lies have been the mantras of her neither–nor mind, her darkest corners where the agents of self-sabotage lie in wait, because she cannot have—she does not deserve—anything good until she gets justice for her mother. Until, _until_. 

And now here is, unexpectedly, Captain Gates having already packed her bags for the land of something good and carried them to the metaphorical curb. 

_Kate, this is the kind of work you were meant to be doing._

_From what I hear, you’re on a short list_

_With any luck, this could be your last case._

There is, unexpectedly, validation she has not allowed herself all this time. There are tears pricking behind her eyes because she has buried everything about this and the choices she has made—the necessary choices she has refused to make—have been bubbling, festering, eating away at her. And here, unexpectedly, is Captain Gates saying out loud one of the many things she has needed to hear— _Work you were meant to be doing._

There is, predictably, Lanie. Her kind, stalwart, impatient, ass-kicking friend who is gracious enough not to roll her eyes at how exactly this is a re-run of a conversation from just a year ago, this time without even benefit of wine. _Maybe that’s not such a bad thing—Yeah, but what if it_ is. There is Lanie who she could have been—should have been—talking to all the while. She should have been holding on with clenched teeth and white knuckles to this line to sanity, because at every point she has sown a land mine, and at every point, this has been true— _Maybe that’s not such a bad thing._ Even now, this is true— _Maybe that’s not such a bad thing_.

But the phone rings and she is silent. The phone rings and the lifeline slips through her fingers, taking with it raw flesh and the possibility of survival. 

* * *

She is discovered. There is a piece of paper fluttering to kiss the ground. There is a chain reaction.

_What’s wrong with it is that you hid it from me …_

It’s a simple statement, a stripped-to-the-bone statement, a _true_ statement. In her either–or mind, in her neither–nor mind, she has cast him as a villain. She has imagined him a landmine. Everything self-destructive thing in her has whispered this, is still whispering this as she stands, fixed in place, and watches him go. Every self-destructive thing in her whispers that she can, should, will have nothing good. 

* * *

Her dad is not as kind as Lanie. He is nowhere near as patient. He is not as unambiguously affirming as Captain Gates, and she is sullen about it. She is transported back in time to the summer she was seventeen, when they were barely speaking and each of them tugged at her mother—each of them ran Johanna Beckett ragged as they insisted she play referee. 

She hunches into herself as he tells her truths. She is trampled beneath the weight of her own history—the weight of his cruelty in offering it up her, offering it up now: _You know, right around here you always end them. Now why is that?_

She would like to hate him for it. She would like to show him the way she did the summer she was seventeen—the summer she bought her bike. She would like to pack a bag with a change of clothes and the meager contents of her secret savings account and sling one leg over the bike he hates. She would like to run away. 

She _is_ running away. She isn’t running away. 

Her dad is a lifeline, too. _I just want to be sure whatever decision you make, it’s because it’s what you want. Not because you’re afraid._

She is not afraid. She I not _simply_ afraid, though she has good reason to be now. She has good reason to be, in this minefield of her own making, but even now, she wants this. She wants _him_. She wants to be expansive and greedy. She wants to sow one last landmine right beneath her either–or mind, her neither–nor mind. 

She wants to have unambiguously asked him, like a fucking grown-up— _Castle, where are we going? Where is_ this _going?_

She wants to have picked up the phone the second she walked out of that bizarre conversation with Stack. She wants to have stepped right into his arms and wondered out loud, _What the hell was that?_ She wants have tucked her bare feet beneath her on the couch and leaned into his side late into the night as they talked and talked and talked about it—what it could mean, how they could do this, how this might work, because it is not either–or, it is not neither–nor. It is not some fucking written-in-stone prophecy. 

She wants. She belatedly fucking _wants_. 

But he is a lifeline. He is, always has been, always will be her sturdiest, most steadfast lifeline. He shows her the rawness of his anger—all the places in his soul where the light has been snuffed out. He calls her out as unkind, ungrateful, oblivious to the work he has always done to lift her up, to still the sinister flicking tongue of her self-destructive impulses— _I have had to scratch and claw for every inch_. Even then, even through every agonizing second of his recitation of her sins, she knows he is a lifeline, if she will only grab hold. 

_So whatever happens, and whatever you decide …_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Late, long, lousy, and Tumblr lost this post three times. A sign from the universe. This is always the worst stretch of the series. 


End file.
